Dr. LI Yiwen (李怡文)

Yiwen Li is an Assistant Professor teaching history and cultural heritage at the City University of Hong Kong. She received her Ph.D. in History from Yale University and studies maritime trade and cultural exchanges in the pre-modern East Asian world. Her dissertation Networks of Profit and Faith: Spanning the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea, 838-1402, which focuses on Sino-Japanese relations during the five centuries when their official diplomatic relationship was suspended, won the Arthur and Mary Wright Prize for the best doctoral dissertation in non-Western History (2017).  

Li is currently working on her second project "Sacred Crafts: Artisans and Buddhist Monasteries in China and Japan, 960 - 1368." She is also a member of the working group "Abilities and Authorities" at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.

She earned her BA (2008) and MA (2011) from Peking University. In 2014-15, she was a Japan Foundation Fellow at the Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University.

Courses Taught

• Sources of Chinese Tradition
• Texts in Chinese Art and Culture
• Culture and Heritage of East Asia
• The Study of Dunhuang

East Asian Maritime History

Sino-Japanese Relations

Material Culture