Jian is a doctoral candidate in History who specializes in the Middle Period (c. 700 – c. 1300) of Chinese history. His research concerns the history of geographical writing. His dissertation examines the shifting social, intellectual, and environmental conditions in which “local” became a legitimate scale of writing among learned men during the Middle Period. The dissertation investigates why, by what means, and in what sense scholars and officials of the Song Empire (960–1279) invested “prefectures and counties” (or “localities”) with sufficient unity and permanence to become a geographical scale at which government offices, social elites, ordinary residents, buildings, and topographies converged into coherent wholes. By addressing these questions in relation to a prefecture known as Mingzhou 明州 (modern Ningbo), his dissertation will clarify the organization and reorganization of central–local relations in the Song dynasty, and make a unique contribution to the interdisciplinary study of the relationships between environment, infrastructure, and political rule.
