Ongoing Projects

Who Were the “Fan”? Ethnic Classification and Social Order on the Tibetan Plateau and in Taiwan under the Qing Empire

Centered on the concept of fan 番, this project compares how the Qing empire classified and governed the peoples of the Qinghai–Kham–Tibet plateau and Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples, asking how the translation of terms, institution-building, and administrative practice formed a cross-regional imperial language of governance.

The Diplomatic Career of Iuming Suez and Sino-Indian-Tibetan Relations at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Through the life of the modern diplomat Iuming Suez (史悠明), this project examines Sino-Tibetan relations in the late Qing and early Republic, the reorientation of Republican foreign policy and its knowledge systems, and the shaping of geopolitics in modern Asia.

Governing beyond Death: The Dalai Lama, Reincarnation, and the Making of Early Modern China

An English-language book project. Tibetan Buddhist reincarnation is usually treated as a matter of religious doctrine; this book shows how it was entwined with statecraft and how sacred authority was transmitted amid rupture.

Research Group on the History of the IHP

Founded in 1928, the Institute of History and Philology is approaching its centennial. The Research Group on the History of the IHP collects, records, and compiles the Institute’s history while planning scholarly events and publications for its hundredth anniversary.