Jiyan Qiao is an assistant professor at the Institute for Area Studies. Trained across disciplines on three continents, she specializes in intellectual history of middle period China and teaches a wide range of courses at Leiden and LUC.

More information about Jiyan Qiao

I am mainly an historian of political philosophy. My field of specialty is middle period China, on which I wrote my dissertation and am preparing my first monograph, currently titled Between Humanism and Statism: Approaches to Statecraft in the Tang-Song Transition. Setting up a new framework to revise our understanding of the profound changes from eighth- to twelfth-century China, it reconstructs an historical “Confucian” way of governance that contrasts with the statist one advocated by contemporary thinkers, while contributing to philosophical discussions on virtue ethics and politics, freedom, the state, ideology and worldview.

Featuring close analysis of key concepts in context, I also participate in methodological discussions on textual interpretation in the recently globalized discipline of intellectual history.

Earlier in my life, I studied Chinese economy. On realizing that economic concerns were not central in governance and that to understand China today, one had to know its past, I started over and, combined with a discovery of my real interest, turned to getting trained in Chinese and Western humanities from scratch.

An accredited professional translator for some years, I have rendered millions of words between English and Chinese. Translation projects in progress include an anthology of Su Shi’s (1037-1101) political philosophy texts and Wang Anshi’s (1021-1086) Miscellaneous Theories.

Based on these experiences and ongoing explorations, I teach across the humanities and social sciences in Leiden and The Hague. For graduate projects, I welcome inquiries on history of Chinese political thought and middle period China.

Education

2021, Ph.D., Leiden University, The Netherlands

2014, A.M., Harvard University, United States

2008, Ph.D., Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, China

Positions

2022- University Lecturer (permanent), Institute for Area Studies, Leiden University

2021-2022, Lecturer, Institute for Area Studies, Leiden University

2020-2021, Postdoctoral Fellow, Hebrew University of Jerusalem