Academic Staff
Dr. PAN Yiying
Assistant Professor
Late Imperial and Modern China, Migration, Empire Building, State Building, Environmental History, Infrastructure Studies
- HJ610
- +852 3400 8934
- yiying.pan@polyu.edu.hk
Research Overview
Dr. Pan is a historian of late imperial and modern China. Before joining the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, she has taught at New York University Shanghai and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research focuses on grassroots-level mobility, which covers human movements and the infrastructures that sustain mobility. Her first book in progress, Symphonic Movements: Underclass Migration and Socio-Economic Sustainability in Qing-Period Sichuan, uses underclass migration as a lens to rewrite histories of state-building and socio-economic contestation in late imperial and modern China. She is also working on a second project that investigates the infrastructural remaking of the Upper Yangzi River from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. In addition to academic writing, she is collecting materials for a short story about boatmen, which explores the tension between name and identity.
Education and Academic Qualifications
- Ph.D., East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago, U.S. (2020)
- B.A., History Department, Tsinghua University, China (2013)
Academic and Professional Experience
- Postdoctoral Fellow, New York University Shanghai, China. (Sep.2020—Jan.2022)
- Visiting Lecturer, History Department, University of Illinois at Chicago, U.S. (Jan.2019—Jun.2019)
Research Interests
Research Output
- “Rapids as Compasses: The Riverine Environment, Experiential Knowledge, and Steam Navigation on the Upper Yangzi River.” International Journal of Asian Studies (September 2024): 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479591424000251
- “The Short Life of a Statutory Label: War Mobilization and Underclass Migration in Eighteenth-Century Sichuan.” Late Imperial China. Vol.44, No.2, (December 2023): 67-105. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/918496
- “Nexus of Self-Organization: The Expansion of Collective Responsibility Networks among Boatmen in Nineteenth-Century Chongqing.” International Journal of Asian Studies. Volume 20, Issue 1, (January 2023): 115-136. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479591421000231
- “Understanding the Rise of ‘Socialism’ Through the New Tide Journal [In Chinese].” Tsinghua Journal of Historical Studies (Qinghua shiyuan). Vol.5. (May 2013): 176-185.
- “The Jinchuan Wars and the Transformed Strategy of Governing Underclass Migrants [In Chinese].” In Wang Hui and Feng Naixi ed., Remapping (Quyu), Vol.12. Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chuban she. Forthcoming.
- Book Review of Asia Inside Out: Itinerant People by Eric Tagliacozzo, Helen F. Siu, and Peter C. Perdue [In Chinese]. Historical Inquiry (Taida lishi xuebao). No.65 (June 2020): 225-243.
- “Inland Artery of Global Connectivity: Infrastructural Remaking of the Upper Yangzi River in the Age of Global Steam Revolution,” PI, Early Career Scheme of Research Grants Council (Awarded in 2024).
- “Ecological Crises, Technological Changes, and Chinese Culture (Fourteenth to Twenty-First Century),” Co-PI, Sin Wai Kin Foundation and UGC Research Matching Grant Scheme (Awarded in 2022).
- “Underclass Migration, Empire Building, and Political-Economic Sustainability in Sichuan, 1736-1864,” PI, Start-up Fund for New Recruits, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Awarded in 2022).
- Liu, Chao-Lin, Thomas J. Mazanec, & Jeffery R. Tharsen. “Exploring Chinese Poetry with Digital Assistance: Examples from Linguistic, Literary, and Historical Viewpoints.” Translated from English to Chinese in Journal of Digital Humanities (Shuzi renwen). No.2 (2021): 88-116.
- Volpp, Sophie. “Seventeenth-Century Italian Scenographic Design and the Tongjing hua Paintings of Qianlong’s Private Theaters.” Translated from English to Chinese in Qingdai xiqu yu gongting wenhua (Court Theater and Court Culture in the Qing Dynasty), ed. Zhu Wanshu, Shang Wei and Zhang Hongwei. 245-280. Nanjing University Press, 2018.
- "Fixing Rapids on Paper: Translation of Riverine Knowledge and Diplomatic Negotiation over the Upper Yangtze Navigation Regulations." Paper presented at Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, Seattle, WA, US, March 15, 2024.
- “The Transformation of the Qing Frontiers and the Changing Policies on the ‘Floating Population’.” Paper presented at the Third Annual Conference on Borderlands and Frontiers, Tsinghua Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences, Beijing, China, November 7, 2022.
- “Contested Infrastructures of Mobility: Subaltern Migration and Empire Building in Asia, 17th-20th Century.” Paper presented at 2022 Collaborative Research Development Workshop on Asia: Drivers and Dynamics of Migration, Social Science Research Council, US, June 28-July 2, 2022.
- “From Rapids to Stations: Contested Navigation Infrastructures in the Upper Yangtze River, 1877-1937.” Paper presented at Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, Honolulu, HI, US, March 26, 2022.
- “Human Mobility in the Qing Southwest Frontier and Political-Economic Transformations.” Paper presented at the Second Annual Conference on Borderlands and Frontiers, Tsinghua Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences, Beijing, China, December 10, 2021.
- “Bandits, Porters, and Migrant Laborers: Weaving Spaces for the Itinerant Population in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Sichuan and Beyond.” Paper presented at 23rd Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies, Leipzig, Germany, August 26, 2021.
- “Integrating the Currents: Environment, Infrastructure, and Imperial Knowledge in Early Twentieth-Century China” Paper presented at CGA-GPS Young Scholars Symposium: Asia and the World, New York University Shanghai, Shanghai, China, April 16, 2021.
- “What Should the State See: Environment and Governance in the Maps of Yan Ruyi (1759-1826).” Paper presented at AFEC International Colloquium, Paris, France, October 16, 2020.
- “Recurrent Crises, Restructured Knowledge: ‘White Lotus’ Rebellions and Transformations of Geopolitical Vision in Early Nineteenth-Century China.” Paper presented at Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, Denver, CO, US, March 21, 2019.
- “Crisis and Social Transformation.” Presentation delivered at First Annual Young Scholar’s Forum in Chinese History, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China, July 14, 2018.
