Bill Kelson

I am a PhD candidate hard at work on a doctoral dissertation entitled “Empire Unraveled: The Great Crash that Doomed China’s Last Dynasty.” The study is an economic, social, and cultural history of the financial panic of 1883 in late-Qing China. The committee overseeing my project is led by Professor Stephen Mihm and includes Professors Tonio Andrade (Emory), Madeleine Zelin (Columbia), Scott Reynolds Nelson, and Timothy Yang. My broader research interests are in Chinese history, the history of capitalism, global history, and the history of imperialism and colonialism in East Asia. I hold an MA from Boston College, and I studied Chinese language at IUP Tsinghua and the Taipei Language Institute. I have received various internal grants, including a Dean’s Award from the Graduate School to support research in London, as well as two outside fellowships: a Luce Foundation/ACLS China Studies Predissertation Grant and a 2021-22 Fulbright-Hays DDRA award to support research at Academia Sinica in Taiwan.