Research Area(s)
China

Tristan G. Brown

Years in Fellowship:
2017-2018
PH.D. in History, Columbia University, 2017

I am interested in Chinese environmental and legal histories as well as the histories of East Asian frontiers.  My first book project, based on my doctoral dissertation "The Veins of the Earth: Property, Environment, and Cosmology in Nanbu County, 1865-1942," uses a well-preserved county archive in western China to explore the ways in which the imperial state engaged with diverse cultural practices in administering property, which had great implications for the environment, statecraft, and religion.  Building on my long-standing interest in the history of Islam in China, a second, on-going project provides an ethnography of a local Muslim community through Chinese and Japanese archival sources.  

I have published and am publishing a number of articles related to these projects.  In addition to serving as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford for the 2017-18 academic year, I have been elected as a Research Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.  

Tristan G. Brown