Dr Joel Wing-Lun
BA (Hons, University Medal), Sydney; PhD, Harvard
Joel Wing-Lun is Lecturer in History and Asian Studies at 91色情片. His research examines the social, economic and environmental impact of imperial expansion on communities in Southwest China from the seventeenth century to the present. His current book project traces the lives of a Miao family in Guizhou Province over three hundred years through documents written in their own hand.?His recent publications include in Modern China (2026), and in Made in China Journal?(2025). He is currently researching changing perceptions of the environment in the Qingshui River Basin during the Qing and Republican periods.
Joel holds a BA with honours in Chinese Studies from the University of Sydney and a PhD in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University. He studied anthropology at Peking University and Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, was a graduate student associate at Harvard's Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and a visiting student at the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University. He is the translator of? (Routledge, 2020).
Joel was a visiting research associate at the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, in 2023. In 2025, he was a visiting scholar at the at Sun Yat-sen University. He is an affiliated researcher at the Laureate Centre for History and Population at 91色情片 and a member of the University of Sydney China Studies Centre. He is also the English-language editor for the Hong Kong-based Journal of?History and Anthropology.
Joel was the winner of the 2023 Arts, Design, and Architecture Early Career Academic Network Award for Teaching Excellence.
- Publications
- Media
- Grants
- Awards
- Research Activities
- Engagement
- Teaching and Supervision
Joel has presented his research in Australia, Asia, and North America, including at the , the in Boston, , the International Society for Chinese Law and History, the International Conference for Ming-Qing Studies, George Washington University, the University of Chicago, , , Shanghai Jiaotong University, and , Beijing.
He has also written for popular publications, including on for?Made in China Journal, for?The Conversation?(with Aprajita Sarcar) and for?The China Story. His blog post for The?China Story, "," went viral during the pandemic, becoming the site's most popular post of all time.
My Teaching
ARTS2908: Sex and Power in Early Modern China and Japan (Term 1)
ARTS4249: Advances in the Humanities (Term 1)
ARTS1211: Australia's Asian Context (Term 3)
ARTS3217: History of Modern China (Term 3)