Joanna Waley-Cohen

Joanna Waley-Cohen is the Julius Silver Professor of History at New York University, where she has taught Chinese history since 1992, and Provost Emerita and Affiliated Professor of History at NYU Shanghai. She earned a B.A. (Honours) in Chinese Studies from Girton College, Cambridge University in 1974, an M.A. from Cambridge in 1977, and a Ph.D. in Chinese History from Yale University in 1987. Waley-Cohen joined NYU as Assistant Professor of History in 1992, was promoted to Associate Professor in 1998, full Professor in 2002, Collegiate Professor in 2008, and Julius Silver Professor in 2014. She chaired the NYU Department of History from 2009 to 2012. At NYU Shanghai, she served as the inaugural Dean of Arts and Sciences from 2012 to 2014 and Provost from 2014 to 2025.

Her research specializes in early modern Chinese history, focusing on Chinese global connections, military and political culture, legal history, and gastronomy in the Qing dynasty. She is the author of The Culture of War in China: Empire and the Military under the Qing Dynasty (I.B. Tauris, 2006), The Sextants of Beijing: Global Currents in Chinese History (W.W. Norton, 1999), and Exile in Mid-Qing China: Banishment to Xinjiang, 1758-1820 (Yale University Press, 1991). Notable articles include “On the Militarization of Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Qing Empire” (Common Knowledge, 2006), “China and Western Technology in the Late Eighteenth Century” (American Historical Review, 1993), and “The New Qing History” (Radical History Review, 2004). Current projects encompass culinary culture in early modern China and daily life in premodern China. Waley-Cohen has received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, NYU Goddard and Presidential Fellowships, Yale’s Olin Fellowship in Military and Strategic History, the Silver Magnolia Award (2015), and the Chinese Government Friendship Award (2024). She holds an Honorary Professorship at East China Normal University.

Professional Email: jw5@nyu.edu