Before joining LSE, I earned a BA in Thai from Beijing Foreign Studies University and an MA in Asian and African Literature from Peking University. My research interests lie broadly in the history and literatures of East and Southeast Asia, global history, and material culture. My project aims to use the case of Siamese sappanwood to examine the interplay between natural landscapes, aesthetic trends, dyeing techniques, the Asian commercial network, and the modernization of Southeast Asia. It explores the possibility of converging environmental history, commercial history, and material culture in global historical writing from a non-Eurocentric perspective.

Provisional Thesis Title: “The Tree That Dyed China Red: A Cultural and Environmental History of Siamese Sappanwood from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries.”

Supervisors: Dr Ron Po and Dr Andrew Halladay