Available from @cambridgeUP in January 2026!

New review just dropped! "Border of Water and Ice is a fascinating, richly researched, and accessibly recounted history that will appeal to a wide range of scholars variously interested in empires, environments, borderlands, and area studies" tinyurl.com/2xeswa96

First time ever at UCLA! Look forward to presenting about my book tomorrow at the Center for Korean Studies: international.ucla.edu/cks/event/17184

Ahead of new print alert! You can now read Richard Yu-Cheng Shih's "Reeds, Snails, and Parasites: Schistosomiasis and Wetland Ecology in China’s Yangzi Delta from the 1870s to 1949" from the July 2025 issue. #evnhist #envhum journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/73…

Not in Tokyo for very long, but it's strangely nostalgic to be eating katsu curry at the National Diet Library again for the first time in years.

Call for applications — there's 1 week left for emerging scholars of Korea to apply for the National Committee on American Foreign Policy's Next-Generation Korean Peninsula Specialists program. ncafp.org/resources/appl…

First time in mainland China since the pandemic. Last week friends at Tsinghua University kindly invited me to present about my book. Audience was great and asked sharp questions. Tsinghua is also a lovely campus with a main quad that reminds me a lot of UVA.

More than just an airport stop before Seoul, Incheon is such a fascinating place architecturally and historically, especially around the old treaty port area. As a historian of modern Korea I've talked about this port so many times, but embarrassingly this was my first time here!

The ghosts of Korea's early 20th century history in the urban art of modern Seoul

Osiris’ latest issue: “Animal Mobilities” journals.uchicago.edu/toc/osiris/cur…

I am thrilled to share that my book, Mao’s Steelworks, has been awarded the 2025 Reid Prize (given for “the most significant book contributing to the understanding of Asia”) by the Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA). asaa.asn.au/news/book-abou…

Historians of Twitter/X: I am putting together a syllabus for a graduate/upper undergraduate seminar this fall on "Animal Histories," and would love your help putting together a chronologically/geographically/thematically diverse set of readings. Self-promotion also welcome!

#HistoryMatters Prof. Tom Mullaney's work on Chinese typewriters & his quest to bring a MingKwai to Stanford University Libraries featured in The New York Times “To me it’s just a typewriter,” [Ms. Felix said], “But to other people it’s history; it’s a story, a life, a treasure.” nytimes.com/2025/07/22/nyr…

Stories like this reminds me why I love being a historian. You can feel Tom Mullaney 's passion for what is far more than just machines and technology, but human struggles, aspirations, and dreams. Feel so lucky to have studied with him @Stanfordhistory nytimes.com/2025/07/22/nyr…

THE BOOK COVER IS HERE AND I LOVE IT SO MUCH 🥹💚 press.umich.edu/Books/K/K-Pop-…

"Knowing an Empire: Early Modern Chinese and Spanish Worlds in Dialogue" unveils how these two vast empires, separated by thousands of miles, developed comparable systems to gather, order, and wield knowledge about their local worlds in the process of empire-building. Sources

Excited to be participating tomorrow in a hybrid international conference on Korean and East Asian environmental history. I will be presenting new work on North Korean animal history for those interested: snu.ac.kr/snunow/events?…