Professor Julia Lovell

Overview

Biography

Julia Lovell trained in Chinese studies and history at the University of Cambridge and the Hopkins-Nanjing Centre of Chinese Studies. Her research has so far focused principally on the relationship between culture (specifically, literature, architecture, historiography and sport) and modern Chinese nation-building; and on the wide-ranging impacts of modern China’s encounters with the world beyond its borders.

She completed her first two books, The Politics of Cultural Capital (Hawai’i University Press, 2006) and The Great Wall (Atlantic Books, 2006) as a Junior Research Fellow at Queen’s College, Cambridge.

In 2007, she began working at Birkbeck. Since then, her main publications have been The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China (Picador/Macmillan, 2011); Splendidly Fantastic: Architecture and Power Games in China (Strelka Press, 2012), Maoism: A Global History (Bodley Head/Knopf, 2019) and journal articles including:

 

 "From Beijing to Palestine: Zhang Chengzhi's Journeys from Red Guard Radicalism to Global Islam." In Journal of Asian Studies 75.4 (November 2016): 891-911

"The Cultural Revolution and Its Legacies in International Perspective". In China Quarterly 227 (September 2016): 632-652

“The Uses of Foreigners in Mao-Era China: ‘Techniques of Hospitality’ and International Image-Building in the People’s Republic, 1949-1976.” In Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 25 (2015): 135-158.

“Undesired Outcomes: China’s Approach to Border Disputes during the Early Cold War” (with Zhihua Shen). In Cold War History 15.1 (2015): 89-111.

She is also an active translator of Chinese literature into English. Her translations include:

Monkey King: Journey to the West (Penguin Classics, 2021)

The Matchmaker, The Apprentice and the Football Fan, by Zhu Wen (Columbia University Press, 2013)

The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Stories of China: The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun (Penguin Classics, 2009)

Serve the People, by Yan Lianke (Constable and Robinson, 2008)

I Love Dollars, by Zhu Wen (Columbia University Press, 2007)

Lust, Caution, by Zhang Ailing (Penguin Classics, 2007)

A Dictionary of Maqiao by Han Shaogong (Columbia University Press, 2003)

She is currently co-investigator with the British Museum on an AHRC-funded project, "Cultural Creativity in Qing China, 1796-1912".

 

Highlights

• Monkey King, an abridged translation (with introduction) of Wu Cheng'en's Journey to the West, Penguin Classics 2021.

• Co-investigator with the British Museum of AHRC-funded project "Cultural Creativity in Qing China 1796-1912".

• Maoism: A Global History, Bodley Head and Knopf 2019. Winner of 2019 Cundill Prize for History.

Qualifications

• PhD, University of Cambridge, 2002
• MPhil, University of Cambridge, 1999
• Diploma in Modern Chinese Studies, Johns Hopkins-Nanjing University, 1998
• BA Chinese and History, University of Cambridge, 1997

Research

Research interests

• Modern Chinese culture and nation-building
• Modern Chinese literature
• Late imperial Chinese material culture
• Transnational histories of China

Research overview

My research has so far focused principally on the relationship between culture (specifically, literature, architecture, historiography and sport) and modern Chinese nation-building; and on the wide-ranging impacts of modern China’s encounters with the world beyond its borders.

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

Supervisions within Birkbeck:

4

I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students who are interested in undertaking research in any of my areas of research interest.

Current doctoral researchers

• CONRAD COMPAGNA

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2020 onwards

• JOHN LAWRENCE

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Sep 2019 onwards

  Title of thesis:

  N/D The construction of identity and community in British Hong Kong in the era of war and revolution, 1887-1927.

  Description:

  In contrast to a historiography of empire that privileges the activities of government or explores the lives of prominent individuals and organisations generally from the governing or business fraternity, my research aims to articulate the interests and concerns of the wider British colonial population with regard to the development of a British Hong Kong identity and growing sense of community. I intend to do this through a series of case studies which deviate from conventional studies of governmentality to consider potential areas of collective interest and citizenship: jubilee celebrations and Royal tours; sport, especially cricket; civic demands for greater political representation and constitutional reform; and Hong Kong’s community during the First World War. 

  My research focuses on the years 1887-1927, a period of intense dislocation on the China coast creating challenging conditions for the British settlers established in the colony by the late nineteenth century who were generating their own political and community demands. Britain’s hegemonic position was undermined by intensifying foreign intervention resulting from China’s growing instability in the aftermath of the Sino-French and Sino-Japanese wars, along with the Boxer rebellion and the 1911 revolution with its traumatic aftermath. In Hong Kong itself, the triumphant decade—1887-1897—of jubilee celebrations and Royal visits was tempered by the 1894 plague and, twenty years later, the First World War alongside increasingly challenging relations with Canton. 

• TIM CHAMBERLAIN

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2015 onwards

  Title of thesis:

  Empirical Adventurers: Science and Imperial Exploration in East Tibet, 1900-1949

• ZHIQING HU

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Sep 2019 onwards

Teaching

I offer BA and MA courses on modern East Asia, 20th-century China, the Cold War, global communism, modern Chinese literature, Asian nationalisms and the history of encounters between China and the West.

Publications