SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Overview

The Department is able to supervise MPhil and PhD degrees by research and thesis in a wide range of cultural and linguistic subjects. Intending research students should not feel constrained to limit their choice of topics to those indicated against the names of current staff members (postgraduate students have recently been working on such diverse topics as colour symbolism in ancient Chinese texts, Chinese cinema, and Chinese Braille systems, and translation studies). If necessary, arrangements can be made for joint supervision with teachers from other departments of SOAS. Research undertaken at MPhil and PhD level is based on literary, documentary, and archive materials in the languages of the area and/or on fieldwork conducted in those languages.

Our alumni are to be found in academic and government posts, journalism and other media, museums, art galleries, aid agencies, libraries, charities, medicine, and large and small businesses of many kinds all over the world, and a large number of them work in the area or in the cultural field of their studies.

Some Recent Research Theses

Katherine Foster - Child of Sorrow: Children and Childhood in Late Twentieth Century Chinese Fiction

Jung Eun Jo - Analysis of the Discourse on Music of the Lüshi chunqiu mainly in comparison with the "Yuelun" chapter of the Xunzi

Alastair Morrison - 'Farewell to History': New Historical Fiction's Alternative Vision of the 20th century China

Hing Fong Camilla Lai – Yang Weizhen’s Iron Style Poems on History

Yun-Chung Li – Monk Poetry as External Learning in the Middle and Late Tang, exemplified by the poetry and lives of Guanxiu and Qiji

Christopher Rosenmeier – Shanghai Avant-Garde: The Fiction of Shi Zhecun, Mu Shiying, Xu Xu and Wumingshi

Academic Staff and their Research Areas

Dr Cosima Bruno BA(VENICE) PHD(LONDON)
Contemporary Chinese literature; translation studies

Dr Rossella Ferrari BA(VENICE) MA PHD(LONDON)
Contemporary Chinese drama and film; theory and practice of the avant-garde; transnational Chinese culture

Professor Bernhard Fuehrer BA(NATIONAL TAIWAN) PHD(VIENNA)
Classical Chinese philology, rhetoric, philosophy and literature; the history of Sinology in Europe; reception of the canon with specific reference to the Analects

Professor Michel Hockx DRS PHD(LEIDEN)
Modern Chinese literature and language; Chinese writers and writings from the late imperial and republican periods, with emphasis on modern poetry and on the sociology of modern Chinese literature

Dr Andrew H-B Lo MA PHD(PRINCETON)
Chinese language (Cantonese and Mandarin); fiction and prose from the Ming-Qing periods; cultural activities of Ming and Qing scholars, especially games

Dr Xiaoning Lu BA (Nanjing), MA (Fudan), PhD (Stony Brook)
Chinese-language cinemas, film history and criticism, global socialist culture, and Chinese popular culture.

Dr Tian Yuan Tan BA MA(NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE) PHD(HARVARD)
Pre-modern Chinese literature, with emphasis on drama, songs, and fiction in the later dynasties; Chinese literary history and historiography; court theatre and performance; popular literature and culture.