Hilde De Weerdt joined the Early Modern History Research Group in March 2022 as Professor of Chinese and Early Modern Global History. Professor De Weerdt is broadly interested in intellectual, social, and political history, both within an East Asian context, and within a comparative or global historical framework.
She studied Chinese and Chinese History at KU Leuven (BA) and Harvard University (PH.D.) and taught history at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville (2002-2007, Assistant Professor), Oxford University (2007-2012, Associate Professor), and King’s College London (2012-2013, Reader) before becoming Chair Professor of Chinese History at Leiden University in 2013. She has published five volumes on Chinese political culture and intellectual history, focusing on the workings of late imperial Chinese bureaucratic infrastructures and political communication (Political Communication in Chinese and European History, 800-1600, ed., 2021; The Essentials of Governance, tr. and ed., 2021; Information, Territory, and Networks: The Crisis and Maintenance of Empire in Song China, 2015; Competition over Content: Negotiating Standards for the Civil Service Examinations in Imperial China (1127-1276), 2007; Knowledge and Text Production in an Age of Print–China, 900-1400, ed., 2011).
