Double research grant success

Advancing understanding of Chinese history

A Cardiff University historian has been awarded two research grants to develop her work on displacement and diplomacy with a focus on China’s global connections.

Dr Helena F.S. Lopes will conduct key research over two months in archives and libraries in Taiwan this summer.

‘The two  projects will help us rethink the deep connections between China and Europe and beyond in the 20th century and the role of often overlooked actors, such as women and refugees, in shaping those connections’ explains Dr Lopes.

During her stay in Taipei, the Lecturer in Modern Asian History will access Chinese sources to work on histories of refugees in the South China enclave of Macau during the Second World War and the Cold War from comparative and connected history perspectives thanks to the Center for Chinese Studies Research Grant for Foreign Scholars in Chinese Studies.

Feeding into her second book and additional publications-in-progress, the project will cover parallels between Portuguese-ruled Macau, French-ruled Guangzhouwan and British-ruled Hong Kong, as well as consider a range of Chinese and international state and non-state actors.

Through the second project Dr Lopes will investigate the role of multilingual women in Chinese cultural diplomacy during World War 2.

Using a global micro-history approach to consider the intersection of gender and migration, Chinese Women and Transnational Resistance: A Global Microhistory of Wartime Cultural Diplomacy will also recover the global wartime career of a long-forgotten Chinese writer who worked in Britain, France, and the United States.

Culminating in an international conference in Cardiff in 2025, this two-year project is made possible through the award of a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant.

A historian of modern China and global history, Dr Helena Lopes is author of Neutrality and Collaboration in South China: Macau during the Second World War.