Prof. Yiwen LI, 李怡文

ORCID iD: 0000-0002-6608-9680
Scopus Author ID: 57218885410
ResearcherID: GYA-4655-2022

Metrics for Academic and Research Impact

BA with Outstanding Graduate Award (Peking University); 
MA with Outstanding Graduate Award (Peking University); 
MPhil (Yale University); 
PhD with Distinction (Yale University)

Yiwen Li is associate professor of history at City University of Hong Kong. She received her Ph.D. in History from Yale University, and her dissertation won the Arthur and Mary Wright Prize for the best doctoral dissertation in non-Western History (2017).  Her research interests include maritime East Asia, material culture, and the Buddhist monastic economy. Her first book, Networks of Faith and Profit: Monks, Merchants, and Exchanges between China and Japan, 839 - 1403 CE, is published by Cambridge University Press in their "Asian Connections" series and has received an Honorable Mention for the Joseph Levenson Prize (2025).

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 "Ability and Authority" at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Dept III.

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.

Elected Fellow, Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland

East Asian Maritime History

Sino-Japanese Relations

Material Culture

Buddhist Monastic Economy

Courses Taught

• Sources of Chinese Tradition
• Texts in Chinese Art and Culture
• Culture and Heritage of East Asia
• The Study of Dunhuang
• Chinese Civilization: History and Philosophy (Talents Program GE)