Professor Henrietta Harrison explores the hidden histories of China in her Oxford 'Pulse' interview

Professor Henrietta Harrison, Chair of the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and Professor of Chinese History, features in a University of Oxford Pulse interview exploring her academic journey and a career dedicated to understanding China’s history through the lives, communities and stories that have shaped it.

Professor Harrison reflects on her path from studying Classics at Cambridge to learning Chinese at Harvard, and on the decades she has since spent working in archives and travelling throughout China. She considers how these experiences have informed her approach to history, bringing archival research into conversation with the perspectives and experiences of ordinary people.

The interview traces the breadth of Professor Harrison’s scholarship, from encounters between China and the West and the history of Catholic communities in China to the profound transformations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It also offers an insight into the sources, questions and unexpected discoveries that have guided her research. Professor Harrison is currently researching the experiences of people living through 1949, the year of revolution that brought the Communist Party to China.

Read the full University of Oxford Pulse interview here.