Rate My Professor Nicola Di Cosmo

Nicola Di Cosmo is the Luce Foundation Professor in East Asian Studies in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study. He received his B.A. from Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia in 1982 and his Ph.D. from the Department of Uralic and Altaic Studies (now Central Eurasian Studies) at Indiana University in 1991. Prior to joining the Institute for Advanced Study in 2003, he held research and teaching positions at the University of Cambridge, Harvard University, and the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. His main field of research is the history of the relations between China and Inner Asia from prehistory to the modern period. Within that area, he has published on the early history of China’s relations with steppe nomads, including the book Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Powers in East Asian History (2002), and on Mongol and Manchu history, including Manchu-Mongol Relations on the Eve of the Qing Conquest (2003). He has edited several volumes, such as Military Culture in Imperial China (2009) and The Cambridge History of Inner Asia (2009). His more recent work explores the use of proxy data from climatology and other palaeosciences in the study of the history of China and Central Asia, with special reference to early Eurasian nomads, the Mongol empire, and the Qing dynasty.

Di Cosmo has received grants and fellowships including a Marsden Fund Grant from the New Zealand Royal Society in 2001, a Milton Fund Grant from Harvard University in 1995, a Research Fellowship from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation in 1992, and earlier research grants from institutions in Taipei and Rome. He has also served in visiting and affiliated roles at other institutions, including as a visiting professor at New York University Shanghai in 2015.