Education
Ph.D., Sinology, Hamburg Univeresity, 2000
CAS Speaker Bureau Topic(s)
Early Chinese literature and philosophy; manuscript studies
Regional and Thematic Interests
East Asia
Literature and the Arts
Profile
My research focuses on early Chinese politico-philosophical literature. I am especially interested in how the texts from pre-imperial China, which have been transmitted to us in a form they were given only in the early empire, were understood at the time when they were composed before the Chinese empire was founded. I apply methods of historical textual criticism and make extensive use of newly excavated manuscripts to explore notions of textual identity in pre-imperial China. This new approach to early Chinese literature will in many ways lead to a re-writing of the history of early Chinese thought.
Selected Publications
2013. The Embodied Text — Establishing Textual Identity in Early Chinese Manuscripts. (Studies in the History of Chinese Texts). Leiden: Brill.