Academic interests
I am interested in the history Chinese mapmaking, maritime history, and China in a global context with a focus on the fifteenth to early nineteenth centuries.
My dissertation, which I published as Writing World History in Late Ming China and the Perception of Maritime Asia (Harrassowitz 2020) looked into a set of late sixteenth and early seventeenth century Chinese texts that wrote about the whole world. By comparing the accounts on a selection of countries (Siam, Melaka, and Portugal) I could highlight subtle differences of perception by the authors of these world histories. Furthermore, I showed how late Ming scholars were interested in the world that lay beyond the Ming state and wrote comprehensive accounts.
I have also published on the history of maritime knowledge in early modern China, looking into sailing routes and sailing practices, particularily into Southeast Asia, as well as the perception of this topic by Ming scholars.
Together with Mario Cams, I edited Remapping the World in East Asia: Toward a Global History of the "Ricci Maps", which showed analysed the connection in mapmaking practices between western Europe and East Asia by taking an object-centered approach.
I am currently working on two projects: A book on a set of early nineteenth century terrestrial and celestial maps printed in blue, together with Richard A. Pegg (MacLean Collection, Illinois); together with Mario Cams (KU Leuven, Belgium), I am editing and overseeing the translation into English of a book on the Chinese atlas Guang yutu written by the Japanese scholar Unno Kazutaka.
I am book review editor for Global Asias for the Journal of Asian Studies and co-editor of the Journal of Asian History.
Background
I received my PhD in history from the University of Salzburg and have worked as a postdoc at LMU Munich, NYU Shanghai, and KU Leuven. I hold an MA (Magister Artium) degree in Japanese studies, with minors in Chinese studies and Scandinavian Literature from LMU Munich.
