Eloise Wright is Assistant Professor of History and a member of the Ashoka Centre for China Studies. Her research explores questions of place and identity through the local history of the city of Dali, in what is now southwest China. She is also interested in histories of language and writing, sociology and materiality of texts, and genres of writing about the past. She is currently working on her first book manuscript, tentatively titled Our Place in the World: Writing in and about Dali, Yunnan 1253-1675. Her classes at Ashoka focus on social and cultural history of imperial China, sinophone histories beyond the Chinese metropole, and Chinese historiographical traditions and debates.

Her recent publications include “History and Autoethnography: Accounting for the Indigenous Population of Yunnan, 1550-1650″ in the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History (Spring 2021), and “‘Locality’ on the Borderlands: Structure and Intertextuality in the 1563 Dali fuzhi” in Monumenta Serica (forthcoming, 2021).

Eloise was awarded her PhD in History from the University of California, Berkeley in 2019. She also has an MA in History from UC Berkeley (2014) and BA/B Asian Studies (Chinese), with first class honours and the University Medal, from the Australian National University (2009). Eloise studied Chinese language at Guizhou University and has conducted research in Beijing, Shanghai, and Taipei, in addition to Yunnan province itself. Her research has been funded by the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the American Council of Learned Societies in conjunction with the Luce Foundation. Before coming to Ashoka, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan.