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Research


My current academic research focuses upon Western travellers in Asia during the late 19th / early 20th centuries, particularly in the China-Tibet borderlands.

For more information on my PhD studies see:  


Plus a list of my publications (with PDFs or web-links to those which have been published) can be found here:


I also share my research via: Academia


Listed below are some examples of blog posts which focus on my research and related areas of interest, as well as some of my travel writing, book reviews, and reflections on museums, exhibitions and documentaries, plus miscellaneous historical and literary excursions:


On China: 

The First British Embassy to China, 1793-1794 - Part I

British Artistic Impressions of Qing Dynasty China - Part II

Boxer Rebels & British Diplomats - Peking 1900

China - Between Revolutions

China & The Great War 

May 4th - Star Wars & China 

Red Fort at Tamsui




























"The light of his shaded reading-lamp slept like a sheltered pool, his footfalls made no sound on the carpet, his wandering days were over. No more horizons as boundless as hope, no more twilights within the forests as solemn as temples, in the hot quest of the Ever-undiscovered Country over the hill, across the stream, beyond the wave. The hour was striking! No more! No more! - but the opened packet under the lamp brought back the sounds, the visions, the very savour of the past - a multitude of fading faces, a tumult of low voices, dying away upon the shores of distant seas under a passionate and unconsoling sunshine. He sighed and sat down to read." 

~ Joseph Conrad, "Lord Jim" (1900).


Literary Excursions:


























Other Academic Activity: 

I have contributed to the Engaging Race Project (2020-2022), led by Dr Amy Matthewson, SOAS, University of London. I am also a part of the Other Everests Research Network (2021-2024), led by Dr Jonathan Westaway (University of Central Lancashire) & Dr Paul Gilchrist (University of Brighton). 

Some wry self-reflections upon my academic roots: Bullsh*t Anthropology and "People Call The Romans, They Go The House?"






"Life is too short, and science too vast, to permit even the greatest genius a total experience of humanity. Some people will always specialize in the present, as others do in the Stone Age or Egyptology. We simply ask both to bear in mind that historical research will tolerate no autarchy. Isolated, each will understand only by halves, even within their own field of study; for the only true history, which can advance only through mutual aid, is universal history." 

~ Marc Bloch, "The Historian's Craft" (c.1941).