Biography:
I am a Laming Junior Research Fellow in Living Foreign Languages at The Queen’s College. In my research, I’m interested in how people living in East Asia experienced political cataclysm - war, regime change, imperialism - during the twentieth century, and the narratives crafted around those events in their aftermath.
I am currently completing my first book, Reproductive Texts: Gender, Translation and Imperialism in Modern Taiwan, which looks at repetition, reproduction and re-imagination in Taiwan’s colonial-era textual culture and its postcolonial translation. Alongside this, I have recently begun a new project looking at narratives of materiality during the Second Sino-Japanese War with especial focus on the tension between scarcity, abundance and the militarisation of everyday things.
After training as a historian, I received my MPhil and DPhil in Modern Chinese Studies from the University of Oxford in 2022. My PhD thesis was awarded a Best Doctoral Thesis prize by the British Association for Chinese Studies in 2023. Before arriving at Queen’s, I worked as Lee Kai Hung postdoctoral researcher and lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Manchester, and as an associate tutor at the University of Warwick. I have also spent time as a research associate at National Taiwan Central Library and as a visiting researcher at Waseda University. At Oxford, I teach on the MPhil in Modern Chinese Studies and the MSt in Comparative Literature and Critical Translation.
Aside from my academic work, I am also a translator specialising in modern and contemporary Taiwanese literary and visual culture. My work has appeared in publications including The Reporter 報導者, Taiwan Literature in English Translation, Studio International and various publications for the National Museum of Taiwan Literature.
Publications:
"This is What We Must Transform First: Translation and Transition in Taiwan (1945-1947)”, Journal of Asian Studies (Forthcoming)
“Growing Together: Yang Shuangzi’s Queer Adaptation of Taiwan’s Colonial Fiction”, Comparative Critical Studies 20 (2024): 60-79.
“Mother of the Nation: A Short Translation History of Yang Qianhe’s “Flower Blooming Season””, International Journal of Taiwan Studies 6/1 (2023): 82-108.
“Neither Fact nor Fiction: Endnotes, Mythorealism and Reading “Inner Truth” In Yan Lianke’s Lenin’s Kisses”, Concentric 47/2 (2021): 123-147.
Selected Translations:
“Yueliang de lian” (The Face of The Moon) by He Zhihe, tr. A. Cantrill, Taiwan Literature: English Translation Series 52 (Forthcoming 2024).
“Huang dao zhi chun” (Spring on the Desolate Isle) by Huang Kequan, tr. A. Cantrill, Taiwan Literature: English Translation Series 52 (Forthcoming 2024).
“Shan, chuan, cao, mu” (The Mountains, The Rivers, The Grass and The Trees) by Lü Ho-jo, tr. A Cantrill, Taiwan Literature: English Translation Series 50: Special Issue on Taiwan Fiction and Realism (2024): 51-82.
