Professor Henrietta Harrison
I am a historian of modern China, who specialises in social and cultural history. I did my undergraduate degree in Classics, then learned Chinese and became inspired by it. I previously taught in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Leeds, and in the Department of History at Harvard University. Here at Oxford I enjoy being back in a Chinese department where our students have such a good background, and by the third year can read original Chinese documents and really get deeply into the subject as well as the opportunity to work closely with the Pembroke students doing Chinese.
For my research I enjoy talking to old people in Chinese villages as well as reading books and documents and much of my work has been about ordinary people and their everyday lives in Shanxi province: I wrote one book about a Confucian teacher living through the early years of the 20th century and another about people’s lives in an entirely Catholic village. My most recent book stepped beyond this to look at the history of interpreters and the dangers of their profession as China faced the rise of the British empire in the late 18th and early 19th century. I am now starting a new project on what it was like to live through China's communist revolution and will be teaching an undergraduate option on everyday life in Mao’s China.
In addition, as well as teaching for our two undergraduate core courses on the History and Culture of East Asia and on Modern China, I also teach some Classical Chinese and offer an undergraduate option on China and the World and a masters’ option on the History and Historiography of Modern China.
EMPLOYMENT
Oxford University, Professor, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, 2012-
Harvard University, Professor, Department of History, 2006-2012
University of Leeds, Lecturer in Chinese, Department of East Asian Studies, 1999-2006
St Anne's College, Oxford, Fulford Junior Research Fellow, 1996-1998
EDUCATION
St Antony's College, Oxford, D.Phil in Oriental Studies, 1996
Harvard University, M.A. Regional Studies of East Asia, 1992
Newnham College, Cambridge, B.A. Classics, 1989
FELLOWSHIPS
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard, 2010-2011
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 2001-2002
British Academy Scholarship, Oxford University, 1992-1996
British Council Scholarship, Nanjing University, 1993-1994
Kennedy Memorial Scholarship, Harvard University, 1989-1992
HONOURS
Fellow of the British Academy 2014-
The Perils of Interpreting: The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators between Qing China and the British Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021.
The Missionary’s Curse and Other Tales from a Chinese Catholic Village. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.
The Man Awakened from Dreams: One Man's Life in a North China Village 1857-1942. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005.
The Making of the Republican Citizen: Ceremonies and Symbols in China, 1911-1929. Contemporary China Institute Series, Oxford University Press, 2000.
China: Inventing the Nation. London: Arnold, 2001.
Link to departmental page: https://www.orinst.ox.ac.uk/people/henrietta-harrison#/
Professor Henrietta Harrison
I am a historian of modern China, who specialises in social and cultural history. I did my undergraduate degree in Classics, then learned Chinese and became inspired by it. I previously taught in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Leeds, and in the Department of History at Harvard University. Here at Oxford I enjoy being back in a Chinese department where our students have such a good background, and by the third year can read original Chinese documents and really get deeply into the subject as well as the opportunity to work closely with the Pembroke students doing Chinese.
For my research I enjoy talking to old people in Chinese villages as well as reading books and documents and much of my work has been about ordinary people and their everyday lives in Shanxi province: I wrote one book about a Confucian teacher living through the early years of the 20th century and another about people’s lives in an entirely Catholic village. My most recent book stepped beyond this to look at the history of interpreters and the dangers of their profession as China faced the rise of the British empire in the late 18th and early 19th century. I am now starting a new project on what it was like to live through China's communist revolution and will be teaching an undergraduate option on everyday life in Mao’s China.
In addition, as well as teaching for our two undergraduate core courses on the History and Culture of East Asia and on Modern China, I also teach some Classical Chinese and offer an undergraduate option on China and the World and a masters’ option on the History and Historiography of Modern China.
EMPLOYMENT
Oxford University, Professor, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, 2012-
Harvard University, Professor, Department of History, 2006-2012
University of Leeds, Lecturer in Chinese, Department of East Asian Studies, 1999-2006
St Anne's College, Oxford, Fulford Junior Research Fellow, 1996-1998
EDUCATION
St Antony's College, Oxford, D.Phil in Oriental Studies, 1996
Harvard University, M.A. Regional Studies of East Asia, 1992
Newnham College, Cambridge, B.A. Classics, 1989
FELLOWSHIPS
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard, 2010-2011
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 2001-2002
British Academy Scholarship, Oxford University, 1992-1996
British Council Scholarship, Nanjing University, 1993-1994
Kennedy Memorial Scholarship, Harvard University, 1989-1992
HONOURS
Fellow of the British Academy 2014-
The Perils of Interpreting: The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators between Qing China and the British Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021.
The Missionary’s Curse and Other Tales from a Chinese Catholic Village. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.
The Man Awakened from Dreams: One Man's Life in a North China Village 1857-1942. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005.
The Making of the Republican Citizen: Ceremonies and Symbols in China, 1911-1929. Contemporary China Institute Series, Oxford University Press, 2000.
China: Inventing the Nation. London: Arnold, 2001.
Link to departmental page: https://www.orinst.ox.ac.uk/people/henrietta-harrison#/