Nicola Di Cosmo Appointed To Faculty Of Institute For Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study has announced that Nicola Di Cosmo will join the faculty of its School of Historical Studies as the first Luce Foundation Professor of East Asian Studies.
Di Cosmo, currently Senior Lecturer in Chinese History at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, is a specialist in the relationship between China and its northern neighbors, the nomads of the Inner Asian steppes. His appointment is effective July 1, 2003.
“Di Cosmo’s work is technically superb, highly innovative in approach, and rich in implications for the relations between nomadic and settled peoples, indeed, for simple and complex societies in general,” says Institute Director Phillip A. Griffiths. “His wide range of interests and interdisciplinary approach make this an ideal appointment for the Institute.”
Professor Jonathan Israel, Executive Officer of the School of Historical Studies, comments, “We are especially pleased to have Professor Di Cosmo because of the growing importance of Asian Studies in the world of historical scholarship and, not least, because of his exceptionally broad and original approach to Chinese history, which is based on the use of Mongolian, and other East Central Asian, as well as Chinese, language sources.”
Di Cosmo is author of Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History (2002), and Reports from the Northwest: A Selection of Manchu Memorials from Kashgar, 1806-1807 (1993). In progress are books to be titled, “A Military History of the Manchu Conquest of China” and “The Mongol Empire in World History.”
He is co-author of A Documentary History of Manchu-Mongol Relations, 1616-1626 (2001) and On the Tracks of Manchu Culture 1644-1994: 350 Years After the Conquest of Peking (1995). Editor of Warfare in Inner Asian History, 500-1800 (2002), he co-edited Political Frontiers, Ethnic Boundaries and Human Geographies in Chinese History (2001) and Between Lapis and Jade: Ancient Cultures of Central Asia (1996). He has also written numerous book chapters, as well as articles in such publications as the Journal of World History, International History Review, and Central Asiatic Journal. Di Cosmo’s review articles on inner Asian history have appeared in the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient and Cambridge History of China.
He is on the advisory or editorial boards of the Journal of East Asian Archaeology, Asia Major, and Inner Asia.
Di Cosmo has received fellowships from the New Zealand Royal Society, Harvard University’s Milton Fund, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the Center for Chinese Studies in Taipei, the Institute of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies in Rome, and the Italian Ministry of Education. In addition, he leads Smithsonian Study Tours to Mongolia.
Before assuming his position at Canterbury in 1999, Di Cosmo was assistant professor (1993-97) and then associate professor (1998-99) of Chinese Inner Asian History in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. A visiting lecturer and Rockefeller Fellow in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies, Indiana University in 1992-93, he was Research Fellow at the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, and Research Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge University, from 1989 to 1992.
Di Cosmo earned his 1982 B.A. (Laurea) in Chinese Studies at the University of Venice, and received his 1991 Ph.D. in Inner Asian History from Indiana University. He was a visiting Member in the School of Historical Studies in the spring semester, 1999.
The Henry Luce Foundation, based in New York City, which enabled the establishment of the Luce Foundation Professorship in East Asian Studies, is known for its efforts to encourage American-Asian understanding.