An internationalist and intellectual community builder, I am currently Provincial Chair Professor, University Distinguished Professor, and Professor of British Literature in the School of Foreign Languages at Henan University. I have a strong commitment to theoretically informed historical research, and my work on nineteenth-century British and Anglophone literatures and cultures tends to fall into three, often intersecting, categories: political culture (the attitudes, beliefs, and sentiments that shaped nineteenth-century politics), material culture (defined broadly to include objects and the built environment), and popular fiction (especially the novel of purpose). I also contribute to the scholarship of teaching and learning, specializing in international education and experiential pedagogy. You can read more about my publications here. 

 

I am a founder of the Society for Global Nineteenth-Century Studies, a geographically and disciplinarily diverse network of scholars who share an interest in the world’s connectedness between 1750 and 1914, and currently serve as its president. I am also editor of the Society's journal, Global Nineteenth-Century Studies, and co-editor of its book series, Studies in the Global Nineteenth Century, both of which are published by Liverpool University Press. In addition, I am a general editor of Cultural History and serve on the editorial boards of Victorian Popular Fictions and Humanities & Social Sciences Communications. I am also a member of the International Editorial Advisory Committee of the South African Journal of Cultural History and serve as an editorial consultant to Meridian, which is published by the Global Studies Center at the Gulf University for Science and Technology. 

 

My work has been supported financially by a wide variety of institutions, including the American Philosophical Society; the South Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina; the New York Public Library; and the California Institute of Technology Archives. I have been a visiting scholar at the Armstrong Browning Library, visiting fellow at the National University of Singapore, and the Lynn Wood Neag Distinguished Visiting Professor of British Literature at the University of Connecticut.

 

I am Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (Advance HE) and also hold elected fellowships in the Royal Society of Arts, the Royal Asiatic Society, and the Royal Historical Society.

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In 2022-23, I am serving as co-chair of an international symposium on "The Global / Oceanic / Nineteenth Century"; organizer and program chair of the Society for Global Nineteenth-Century Studies World Congress on "Comparative Empire: Conflict, Competition, and Cooperation, 1750-1914"; and organizer and program chair of the International Society for Cultural History's 2023 conference.