Staff Profiles

I am an historian of nineteenth and twentieth century China. My first book examined inter-group violence in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century upland southwest China. My new research is about teachers within the party-state in China and Taiwan. I have also led a project to translate Mao Haijian's The Qing Empire and the Opium War: Collapse of the Heavenly Dynasty (Tianchao de bengkui) into English. This is one of the most significant pieces of twentieth-century Chinese historical scholarship, and the most comprehensive history of the Opium War ever written.

I grew up and was educated in New Zealand, where I did my BA in history at Otago University, and my PhD at Victoria University of Wellington. Between 2004 and 2008, I lived in China where I taught English in Xinjiang, Sichuan, and Jiangsu, and studied Chinese in Xichang College (Sichuan). Between 2011 and 2013, I lived in Taiwan, where I was a postdoctoral fellow at Academia Sinica. Many of the questions in my research and teaching relate to issues that seemed important in those contexts, or emerged from thinking comparatively about the different places I have lived. These include the question of how comparable colonial processes are in different parts of the world, and also why societies become wealthier, poorer, and more (or less) egalitarian.

I am the current head of history at Newcastle

I am happy to supervise post-graduate work in any area of modern Chinese history.

My first book is A Frontier Made Lawless: Violence in Upland Southwest China (University of British Columbia Press, 2017). The book examines inter-group violence in Liangshan, in southwest Sichuan, within the context of long-term social and political transformation. 

Working on Southwest China led to an interest in Chinese agriculture and environments more broadly. In this field, I am particularly interested in human and animal labour in agriculture, agricultural mechanization, agricultural ecologies in the Southwest and North, and the history of cooperatives.

Researching conflict also meant examining the relationship of the state with local communities. My new research continues this in a study of teachers and the Chinese party-states of the People's Republic and the Republic of China (Taiwan) during the Cold War. The expansion of education in the post-war era in both countries led to a rise of a new branch of the state. This project investigates the gender and ethnic dimensions of teaching, and its relationship with the ruling party. 

PhD students supervised

Current

Xuan Qiao, "Mu Xin and Chinese Aesthetic Modernity" (with Andy Law and Jianfei Zhu) 

Yang Chen, "The Institutionalisation of Court Interpreting in China (1901-1949)" (with Jade Biyu Du and Ya-yun Chen)

Jianhao Xu, "Shaping Feelings: Emotional History and Left-Wing Children's Fiction in the Anti-Japanese War" (with Laura Tisdall and Rob Dale)

Langqiu Zhang, "An Exploration of Metapoetry in Contemporary Chinese Poetry in the 1980s and 1990s" (with Sinéad Morrissey and Fang Su)

Completed

Yier Xu, "Who is the Modern Citizen?: Diseases, Professions, and Identities in Guangxi and beyond, 1920 to 1950s", 2025. With Vicky Long.

Yichi Chen, "The War of Resistance in Hunan: Power, Disaster and Survival, 1937-1945", 2024. With Daniel Siemens and Rob Dale.

Zheng Li, "Being a Woman and a Warrior in Modern China: Xie Bingying’s Autobiographical Practices in the twentieth century”, 2024. With Gitte Hansen and Qian Suoqiao.

Joseph Ross, "Missed Opportunities: How the Taiping Rebellion and American Civil War Changed American Attitudes Towards the Chinese Empire and China, 1850-1865", 2021. With Susan-Mary Grant and Bruce Baker.

Since arriving at Newcastle, I have taught on a large number of modules, with contributions focusing on the history of the Qing empire and twentieth-century China and Taiwan. I have also lectured and led seminars on a range of other topics, including Tibetan history, missionaries in New Zealand, public history in New Zealand, Communist movements in East and Southeast Asia, comparative economic history, and environmental history. 

In 2024-25, my main teaching contributions will be on the following modules:

HIS2317: The Aftermath of War in Europe and Asia, 1945-1956

HIS2309: East Asia from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century

HIS2306: Famines in History

HIS8120: Missions, Missionaries, and Empires in World History

• Articles

  • Lawson J. Strangers on the ladder of the party-state: Women in teaching in Nationalist Taiwan, 1940s–1980s. Gender & History 2024, epub ahead of print.
  • Lawson J. State, Commune and Gender Inequality among Teachers in Rural and Small-town China, 1957-1979. Journal of Historical Sociology 2021, 34(4), 587-603.
  • He H, Lawson J, Bell M, Hui F. Millet, Wheat, and Society in North China over the Very Long Term. Environment and History 2019, 27(1), 127-154.
  • Lawson J. Unsettled Lands: Labour and land cultivation in western China during the War of Resistance (1937-1945). Modern Asian Studies 2015, 49(5), 1442-1484.
  • Lawson J. Mining, Bridges, Opium, and Guns: Chinese Investment and State Power in a Late Qing Frontier. Frontiers of History in China 2015, 10(3), 372-394.
  • Lawson J. “Introduction: Transport and Communications Revolutions in the Late Qing”. Frontiers of History in China 2015, 10(3), 367-371.
  • Lawson J. Warlord Colonialism: State Fragmentation and Chinese Rule in Kham, 1911-1949. Journal of Asian Studies 2013, 72(2), 299-318.

• Authored Book

  • Lawson J. A Frontier Made Lawless: Violence in Upland Southwest China, 1800-1956. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2017.

• Book Chapters

  • Lawson J. "Even if you don't want to drink, you still have to drink": The Yi and Alcohol in History and Heritage. In: Ludwig, C; Walton, L; Wang, Y-W, ed. The Heritage Turn in China: The Reinvention, Dissemination, and Consumption of Heritage. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2020, pp.261-276.
  • Lawson J. Translator's preface. In: Lawson, J, ed. The Qing Empire and the Opium War: Collapse of the Heavenly Dynasty. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp.ix-xii.
  • Lawson J. The Chinese State and Agriculture in an Age of Global Empires, 1880-1949. In: Beattie, J; Melillo, E; O'Gorman, E, ed. Eco-cultural networks and the British Empire : new views on environmental history. London: Bloomsbury, 2015, pp.44-68.

• Edited Book

  • Mao H, Lawson J, ed. The Qing Empire and the Opium War: Collapse of the Heavenly Dynasty [translation of Mao Haijian, 'Tianchao de bengkui yapian zhanzheng zai yanjiu]. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016.