Principal investigators/project coordinators
Giulia Falato, University of Oxford
Giulia Falato works as a Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Oxford, China Centre and as a Senior College Lecturer at University College, Oxford. She was awarded a PhD in Asian and African civilisations, East Asia Curriculum at Sapienza University of Rome in 2017. Her main research interest lies in the history of Sino-Western cultural relations, with a particular focus on exchanges in the fields of pedagogy, moral philosophy and lexical innovations. She also works on educational theories and practices in early imperial and medieval China. Her recent publications include a study on Tang booklets for women education, a book chapter about the Jesuit translations strategies in late Ming and early Qing publications, and the monograph based on her doctoral dissertation on Alfonso Vagnone S.J.’s Tongyou jiaoyu 童幼教育 (On the Education of Children, c. 1632, Brill series Studies in the History of Christianity in East Asia, June 2020). She is also the co-editor of a volume in Italian language titled: Virtuous Youngsters and Where to Find Them: Educational Path and Representations of Young People in the Chinese Pedagogical and Literary Traditions (On the Road to Cathay series, Martino Martini Centre, Nov. 2022).
Renata Vinci, University of Palermo
Renata Vinci is Associate Professor at University of Palermo. She received her PhD in 2017 at the Department of Oriental Studies of Sapienza University of Rome, after one-year joint-fellowship at Fudan University. Her research focused on the evolution of the knowledge on Italy in the Chinese newspaper Shenbao (1872-1911). From 2017 to 2020, she was Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Roma Tre University, where she worked on western fiction in translation in Chinese modern press. During her postdoc, she was also visiting researcher at the Chinese Institute of Heidelberg University.
She works on the modern periodical press, with a focus on the Sino-Western contacts, the relations between Italy and China, and the diffusion of translations of Western literature in late imperial time. She is author of La Sicilia in Cina (Sicily in China, 2019), a study on the representations of the Mediterranean island in Imperial times as a relevant case-study in the perspective of the circulation of Western knowledge in China. She is also co-editor of two volumes in Italian: Chinese and Italian Scholars in Dialogue on Language, Literature and Travel (2021) and Virtuous Youngsters and Where to Find Them: Educational Path and Representations of Young People in the Chinese Pedagogical and Literary Traditions (2022).
Affiliated researchers
Danni Cai, Hangzhou Normal University
Danni Cai 蔡丹妮 (Ph.D., McGill University, 2020) is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the History Department of Hangzhou Normal University, China. She specializes in epistolary studies, the history of women, childhood, and mass education. Her dissertation explores the epistolary knowledge in late imperial and Republican China by focusing on extensive letter-writing manuals she has collected in China and abroad. She has published in international journals, such as the Journal of the American Oriental Society, the Journal of Epistolary Studies, the Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth (JHCY), and Nan Nü: Men, Women and Gender in China. Her paper on children’s letter writing in Republican China is the winner of the JHCY annual Best Article Prize awarded by the Society for the History of Children and Youth in 2021.
Jennifer Y. Chang, National Chengchi University
Jennifer Y. Chang is Assistant Research Fellow at the Humanities Research Center of National Chengchi University. Prior to her current position, Jennifer was Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Modern History at Academia Sinica. She received her PhD and MA in Art History from Sichuan University, a Master of International Affairs degree from Columbia University, and double-majored in Political Economy of Industrial Societies and French at UC Berkeley. Jennifer’s primary research fields include the history of education diplomacy in Republican China, modern Chinese art and wartime diplomacy, and politics of exhibition and identity constructions. Her dissertation examined the exhibition history of Chinese art and antiquities sponsored by the Chinese diplomatic mission in France from the period of the Beiyang government to 1949. She is the author of Universe, Power, Hsiao Chin (2014) published by the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. Jennifer is editor of the bilingual volume, Re-visioning “Little Artists”: Abstraction and Children’s Art Education in Postwar Taiwan, to be published in 2024 as a collection of essays on the collaboration between avant-garde artists and Taiwan’s Mandarin Daily News, a children’s newspaper promoting Mandarin literacy founded in 1948 by the Ministry of Education.
Linda Chu, Academia Sinica/National Taiwan Normal University
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Linda Chu graduated summa cum laude with a dual degree in political science and international development studies from UCLA and received her M.A. in translation and interpretation studies from Fu Jen Catholic University in Taiwan. She is a doctoral candidate at the Graduate Institute of Translation and Interpretation Studies at National Taiwan Normal University, where she also teaches translation studies as a lecturer. Concurrently a doctoral candidate fellow at the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy at Academia Sinica, Linda is at work exploring comparative classical rhetoric with the aim of uncovering untold stories of late-imperial cultural and literary encounters between China and the Europe. Her other interests include Sinophone studies and historical fiction as a literary lens to explore premodern China.
Elisa Frei, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt – Boston College
Elisa Frei is Assistant Professor of Church History at the faculty of Catholic Theology of the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt. She also works as a project assistant for the Digital Indipetae Database, hosted by the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at Boston College, and is a research associate at the University of York. Her first monograph, Early Modern Litterae Indipetae for East Asia, will be published in 2023 by Brill in the Jesuit Studies series. She is the author of several published essays on Jesuit missions and co-editor of the eight-volume series Asia by the Jesuit Daniello Bartoli.
Mei-Yi Kuo, University of Leeds
Mei-Yi Kuo is a doctoral candidate in East Asian Studies at the University of Leeds. Her thesis explores the role of children’s literature, framed by the textbooks, in “shaping the ideal child” at state primary schools (Kōgakkō) in colonial Taiwan. Through analysing textbooks as the modern invention of children’s literature and teaching material, she aims to investigate and explore how the ideologies in text and languages (Japanese and Sinitic) influenced and shaped the young generation. Her research interests concern children’s literature, languages and education, focusing on colonial Taiwan during Japanese rule (1895-1945). She read English Language and Literature at a university in Taiwan and completed an MA in Japanese Studies at the University of Leeds. This was followed later by a CertTESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) from Trinity London, then a TCYL (Teaching Chinese to Young Learners), and finally a TCSOL (Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages).
Laura Lettere, University of Naples L’Orientale
Laura Lettere is 2020 Postdoctoral Fellow, The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhist Studies. She studied Sanskrit and Chinese at La Sapienza, her MA thesis on the Buddhacarita received the 2012 Anna De Sio national award for best thesis in Religious Studies. She received her Ph.D. at La Sapienza, in joint supervision with the Centre of Buddhist Studies at Ghent University and in joint fellowship with Fudan University, Department of Chinese Studies. Her research project on the translation of the Buddhacarita was awarded the 2020 Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship. She is currently part of the research team on the ongoing project “Modelli e dinamiche di trasmissione del buddhismo in Asia” at the University of Naples, L’Orientale. Her research interests include Buddhist translation activities in Medieval China (with a focus on the fourth and fifth century) and their influence on Chinese literature, the origin of Chan Buddhism and contemporary Taiwanese Buddhism. She is a trained and licensed teacher of Mandarin for young learners, and co-author of La civiltà cinese, a three-volume course on Chinese civilization and literature for high school students. Her articles are featured on Journal of Chinese Religions, Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni, Rivista di studi orientali, Sulla via del Catai.
Arianna Magnani, Kore University of Enna
Arianna Magnani is a researcher (RtdA) in Chinese Language and Literature at the University of Enna “Kore,” where she teaches Chinese Language and History of East Asia. She currently coordinates the 2022 PRIN Project titled “M.A.R.E.: Manuscripts and books from Asia Reaching Europe. A semantically enhanced digital library mapping Asian books circulation along the Silk Maritime Routes”, in collaboration with the Universities of Pisa and Salerno. Her research explores transcultural studies, cultural and scientific exchanges between Europe and Ming-Qing China and the contribution given by the Jesuit missionaries. She published the monograph “Enciclopedismo cinese in Europa: percorsi transculturali del sapere tra Seicento e Settecento” (Chinese Encyclopedism in Europe: Transcultural Paths of Knowledge) (Genoa, De Ferrari, 2020) and several articles like “Searching for Sirenes in the 17th and 18th Centuries,” published in Sulla Via del Catai, Nr. 26, May 2022, pp. 87-105.
Kazue Mino, Meiji Gakuin University
Kazue Mino is Visiting Research Fellow at Institute for Christian Studies, Meiji Gakuin University. Her research interest lies in the history of Christianity in Taiwan during the Japanese colonial era, with a particular focus on the interaction between the missiological works of a Scottish Presbyterian missionary Campbell N. Moody (1865–1940) and the Taiwanese Church autonomy movements in the late 1920s and 1930s. She completed her PhD study at Graduate School of Education, Kyoto University in 2016, which resulted in the publication of her dissertation by Shinkyo Publishing Company the following year. Between 2017 and 2019, she carried out her postdoctoral research based at New College, the University of Edinburgh. Other topics of interest include Taiwanese identity, Christianity and anti-colonial movements, and Scottish experience of the British Empire.
Alexandra Magdalena Mironesko, Granada University
Alexandra Magdalena Mironesko (1992) is a PhD from the University of Granada (Spain), Junior Lecturer of Chinese language in the Department of General Linguistics and Theory of Literature (Faculty of Arts / Facultad de Filosofía y Letras) of the University of Granada. Graduated in Modern Languages and their Literatures with a specialization in Chinese Language, she furthered her training, obtaining a Master’s Degree in East Asian Studies and later a PhD. She completed several studies and research stays at the most prestigious Chinese and European universities (Peking University, Sichuan University, Oxford University, Barcelona University).
Her scientific interests are oriented towards studies of the history and culture of modern China with special focus on the development of the educational system in the Republic of China (1912-1949). She is also a member of the “Contemporary China” Research Group of the University of Granada sponsored by the Government of Andalusia.
Giuseppe Rizzuto, University of Florence
Giuseppe Rizzuto is highchool teacher of Chinese Language and PhD candidate in Comparative Languages, Literatures and Cultures, curriculum “Linguistics and Oriental Studies”, at University of Florence. From 2019 to 2021 he was adjunct professor of Chinese language at University of Palermo.
He graduated from University of Bologna in Cultural Anthropology (2009) and in Chinese Language and Culture (2013). His research interests mainly include mobility processes between Italy and China and the connection between education and Chinese society. His publications explore the dynamics of Chinese identity construction in the transnational processes and the evolution of Chinese modern education, with a focus on works of Ye Shengtao. His current research, characterised by an ethnographic approach, is about the learning and maintenance of Chinese language among young people with Chinese origins in Palermo.
Xinyi Shui, Heidelberg University
Xinyi Shui is a Joint-Training Ph.D. Candidate in Sinology at Heidelberg University and Ph.D. Candidate in Education at Zhejiang University. She is also Fellow at the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media | Georg Eckert Institute (GEI) and member of the Chinese Association for Local Education History and Annals. Her research interests mainly include textbooks and curriculum studies in Modern China. Her current research is focusing on the interaction between revolution and textbooks compiled by CPC in China(1937-1949).
Elizabeth Smithrosser, Leiden University
Elizabeth Smithrosser is a scholar of late imperial Chinese publishing culture and intellectual history. She holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford and is currently Lecturer at Leiden Institute for Area Studies, Leiden University. Her first book, The Misadventures of Master Mugwort: A Joke Book Trilogy from Imperial China will be published with Oxford University Press in Autumn 2023, and she writes a monthly column on Tang-Song history for Medievalists.net. Her 2022 article “Un-learning the Stratagems: Qing Pedagogical Efforts against Poisonous Warring States Legacies” in Virtuous Youngsters and Where to Find Them: Educational Path and Representations of Young People in the Chinese Pedagogical and Literary Traditions explored the efforts of Qing Confucian pedagogue Lu Longqi 陸隴其 (1630–1692) to sanitize the age-old text Stratagems of the Warring States (Zhanguo ce 戰國策), which he believed was corrupting the youth of his day.
Qin Yang, University of Nottingham
Qin Yang is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham, UK. Her research focuses on Song classical commentaries, visual representations, and religious texts. She has written a dissertation on “Visual forms of canonical interpretation in Song China (960-1279)” (ANU, 2022) and depictions of the Yellow River in early Qing local gazetteers (JEACS 3, 2022). Her current projects include using anecdotal sources to understand modes of human-divine interaction in Chinese religions and comparing the ritual production of divine dreams in ancient Greece and early modern China.