Hanzhi Dai

Thesis title: Overcoming Troubles: Yan Xishan, Regional Mobilisation, and Surviving in Shanxi through Wars 1928-1949

Biography

Qualifications

Bsc (Hons.) International Relations, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2017-2020

MPhil Political Thought and Intellectual History, University of Cambridge, 2020-2021

PhD History, University of Edinburgh, since 2022

Undergraduate teaching

I tutor the following course in History:

Introduction to Historiography (semester 1, 2023-24)

The Global Economy since 1750 (semester 2, 2023-24)

 

I tutor the following course in Asian Studies:

Modern East Asian History A : 'Japan and Korea in the Modern World' (semester 1, 2023-24)

Research summary

"Overcoming Troubles: Yan Xishan, Regional Mobilisation, and Surviving in Shanxi through Wars, 1928-1949"

My PhD project studies the experience of Shanxi, a Northwestern 'hinterland' province under the military dictatorship of Yan Xishan (1883-1960) from the end of the 'Northern Expedition'(1926-1928) to the fall of the Republic of China in 1949. With the total mobilisation in the decades of ceaseless civil and international wars as the background of the time, my focus is the implementation of experiments in ideological indoctrination, vernacular party-state-building, corporatism, as well as Shanxi's (dis)connection with both China and the world outside.

Current research interests

Chinese Warlordism, authoritarianism, the long Second World War, colonial and imperial history, microhistory, history of the book, global intellectual history, social and economic history

Past research interests

Intellectual History, Carl Schmitt, the Soviet Union, International Relations, empires, critical War Studies

Affiliated research centres

  • Co-Convenor, Global History Graduate Workshop, the Edinburgh Centre for Global History
  • Graduate Representative, Centre for the Study of Modern and Contemporary History, University of Edinburgh
  • Staff Writer, Centre Franco-Chinois de la Ville et du Patrimoine (CFCVP)

Organiser

Co-convenor:

Edinburgh Centre for Global History Graduate Workshops, University of Edinburgh, July 2023-May 2024.

Participant

International Society for Intellectual History Conference 2023: Crisis and Change in Intellectual History since c.1450, 4th September, 2023, University of Edinburgh-"How to Correctly Organise the Mass?: Jinshan Conference, Chinese Warlordism, and the Threat and Allurement of Party-State Dictatorship 1921-23"

9th Annual Trans-Asia Graduate Student Conference: Transcending Boundaries, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 15th April, 2023, "Recording and Imagining Wartime Xikang, A Han-Tibetan-Yi Frontier, 1939-1946"

Second World War Network (Scotland) inaugural Postgraduate Showcase, 29th November, 2022, "'Building New Xikang': War Efforts and Total State Experiment in China's Southwestern Borderland, 1939-1945"

Papers delivered

Joint Conference of the Second World War Network (Scotland)& the Second World War Research Group 2023: From the Personal to the Global: Lived Experiences of the Second World War, University of Edinburgh, 9th June, 2023, "Yan Xishan, Propaganda, and Surviving in Shanxi's War of Resistance, 1940-1944"

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