Research interests

My main research interest is in the landscape art history of China and Britain in the early modern period, within the broad cultural context of philosophy, rituals, health and wellbeing, and social practices.  I am particularly interested in Chinese-European contacts in relation to landscape imagination in the early modern and how such contacts engaged the changing ideas in the discourses of philosophy, religion, economy and politics that constitute the process of modernity.  

Research Projects

Cultivating Happiness

I am Principal Investigator for the project 'Cultivating Happiness: Sir William Temple, Confucianism, and the English landscape garden' funded by the Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2016-2017). This project examines the seventeenth-century English reception of Confucianism and China through the lens of the essayist and statesman, Sir William Temple, focusing on his concept of happiness. Contextualising Sir William Temple’s writings across the fields of moral philosophy, literary criticism, political thought and sinology, this project reveals that at the fountainhead of the English landscape garden was a strand of early Enlightenment thought advocating a notion of happiness based on one’s tempered passions cultivated by the arts. Temple’s idea of the arts shaping moral-political sensibilities through sensual engagement with the environment demonstrated that late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English high culture was rooted not in a purely English soil, but in the intercultural processes between China and Europe.

Nature Entangled

I am Principal Investigator for an EU Marie-Curie research grant, ‘Entangled histories of nature in the landscape discourses between China and Europe in the 16^th-18^th centuries’ (2014-2018).

This project explores the history of conceptualising nature as shared between China and Europe in the landscape discourses during the early modern period, with a focus on the complexity of the often hidden interrelations between China, ‘the ancient’ and ‘the modern’ associated with the idea of ‘imitating nature’. Investigating the landscape discourses within the broad social and cultural contexts, the project aims to demonstrate how this shared historical legacy of landscape imitating nature between China and Europe has shaped and continues to shape our environment and our perceptions of man and nature relations.

Among my contributions to the project will be a monograph on the imagery of Chinese landscapes in the British imagination from 1685 to 1772, with a focus on how a multifaceted image of ‘oriental Arcadia’ was used by the British radical conservative elite to assert a Neo-Platonic utopian regime, counteracting the democratic-capitalist  development mobilized by the middle class.  The grant involves two PhD studentships and a series of workshop or symposia in conjunction with the Chinese Studies Seminar Series at the University of Exeter.

Entangled landscapes

I am the co-editor of a book entitled Entangled landscapes: early modern China and Europe, developed from an international symposium which I convened at the University of Zurich in 2013.The book initiates an innovative research diagram ‘entangled landscapes’, investigating how the exchange of landscape – imagery and knowledge – between early modern China and Europe was moulded by their complex interrelations at the different levels of economy, society, politics and morality and how the exchange contributed to the formation of their citizens' social and cultural identities.

Matteo Ripa’s ‘Views of Jehol’

Between 2011-2013, I was the leader of the Marie Curie research project ‘Matteo Ripa’s “Views of Jehol”: Entangled Histories of 18th Century European and Chinese Landscape Representations,’ funded by Marie Curie Actions, European Union hosted at the University Research Priority Programme ‘Asia and Europe,’ University of Zurich.

This project examines the dialogues between Matteo Ripa’s copperplate engravings of the ‘Views of Jehol’ and the original woodcuts of Qing Emperor Kangxi’s Yuzhi Bishu shanzhuang shi designed by Shen Yu, so as to reveal this visual art exchange taking place at the Qing court as an encounter of Kangxi’s imperial project within a syncretist framework of Neo-Confucianism and the Catholic Church’s expansion underpinned by Neo-platonic tenets. This project also scrutinizes the 18th-century British conservative elite’s receptions of the missionaries’ images and their descriptions of Qing imperial gardens. I argue that the English landscape movement appropriated Christian-interpreted ‘Chinese’ elements from their desire to build a Neo-Platonic imperial power.

The project highlights the complex connections between European and Chinese landscape gardens within their social, political and economic contexts. It thereby enriches the trans-cultural historiography of landscape gardens and helps to anchor the notion of an interlinked Eurasian art history.  

Research supervision

I am happy to supervise students in the fields of landscape and cultural history of China and Britain as well as Chinese and European cultural exchange from the 17th century onwards. 

Research students

Current PhD students

Yining Fu, "Architectural Heritage Conservation in China: Historical Development from 1840-1949" (working project title, China Scholarship Council-funded, supervised with Dr Sabrina Rahman)

Si Xiao, "Yuanmingyuan’s Treasure: Biographies of the Qianlong Emperor’s Manuscript" (China Scholarship Council-funded, supervised with Dr Sabrina Rahman)

Fangxu Sun, "The political discourse of Chinese visual parody art after the reform and opening-up" (Co-supervised with Dr Meredith Hale)

Qi Zhou, "Visual Culture of Chinese Ceramics for External Communication in 17th-18th Centuries" (Co-supervised with Prof Martin Pitts)

Yanping Wu, "Katherine Mansfield, Classical Chinese Literature and Thoughts" (China Scholarship Council-funded, co-supervised with Dr Beci Carver)

Completed PhDs

Lin Zhu (University of Edinburgh), "The Poetics and Politics of Withdrawal in the Cultural Productions of Seventeenth-century China" (China Scholarship Council-funded, external supervisor)

Maria Anesti, "Eremitic Landscape Dwelling in Confucian China and Enlightenment Europe" (College of Humanities Studentship, supervised with Prof Melissa Percival and Prof Shaoxin Dong, Fudan University)

Aihua Zhou, "Chinese Face and Western Body: Uncovering Images of Masculinity in Xu Beihong’s Paintings" (Second supervisor. First supervisor: Prof Corinna Wagner)

Russell Sanchez, "The Sceptre and the Sextant: Imperialism and Scientism in the Travelogues of Johan Nieuhof, Lord George Macartney, and A.E. van Braam Houckgeest" (EU Marie Curie-funded, supervised with Prof Emma Cayley)  

Modules taught

• AHV1006 - Visual Media
• HUM2005 - Tales of Freedom, Necessity and Providence
• HUM3015 - The Place of Meaning: Gardens in Britain and China
• MLM1010 - China of the Senses: Approaching Chinese Culture and Environments
• MLM1052 - Beginners Chinese
• MLM2011 - Encounters and Entanglements: Chinese Art in Global Perspective
• MLM3009 - China through the Lens: Cultural Translation and Self-Presentation
• SMLM235 - Key Concepts for Global Literatures and Cultures