Social, Cultural, and Political History of Colonialism;
The Chinese treaty ports;
The British Empire in Asia;
History of Expatriate and Settler Communities.

A. BOOKS

• Empire Careers: Working for the Chinese Customs Service, 1854-1949. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013

B. ARTICLES AND ESSAYS

• “Managing ‘White’ Criminality: Disorderly Britons on the China Coast, c. 1918–1940.” Itinerario, 2025, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0165115325000075.

• “‘Wan and Wistful Little Waifs’: Settler Child Welfare Work in Shanghai, c. 1890–1939.” Cultural and Social History 22:1 (2025): 103–26. doi:10.1080/14780038.2024.2442125.

• 'Managing Britons Abroad: Consular work in the nineteenth-century treaty ports.' Companion essay to the 'Foreign Office, Consulate and Legation Files, China: 1830-1939' collection (Adam Matthew Digital, 2025).

• 'Educating the China-Born: Colonial Cosmopolitanism in Shanghai’s Schools for Settler Children, 1870–1943,' Journal of Social History, vol. 55, no. 1 (2021), pp. 180-206.

• ‘Charles Mason, the “King of China”: British Imperial Adventuring in the Late Nineteenth Century.’ Historical Research. 90:249 (August 2017), 567-590.

• ‘Foreign Communities in the Treaty Ports: The Foreign Office Files for China, 1919-2’ and ‘Foreign Communities in China, 1930-48: War, Revolution, and the Western Retreat from China.’ Introduction to Foreign Office Files for China, 1919-1948. Marlborough: Adam Matthew Digital, 2013-2014.

• ‘“Youthful, likely men, who can read, write and count”: Joining the foreign staff of the Chinese Customs Service, 1854-1927.’ The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. 36:2 (2008), 227-242.

• ‘“The Life Career of us all”: Britons and Germans in the Chinese Customs Service, 1854-1917.’ Berliner China-Hefte: Chinese History and Society. 33 (2008), 34-53.

C. CHAPTERS IN EDITED VOLUMES

• ‘Eurasians in treaty-port China: Journeys across racial and imperial frontiers,’ in Migrant Cross-Cultural Encounters in Asia and the Pacific, edited by Jacqueline Leckie, Angela McCarthy, Angela Wanhalla. Abingdon: Routledge, 2016. 19-35.

• ‘Imperial Ambitions: Russians, Britons, and the Politics of Nationality in the Chinese Customs Service, 1890-1937,’ in Russia and its Northeast Asian Neighbors: China, Japan, and Korea, 1858-1945, edited by Kimitaka Matsuzato. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016. 33-48.

• ‘ePortfolios and History Teaching: Supporting the Development of Information Literacy and Research Skills,’ in Tushar Chaudhuri and Beatrice Cabau (eds)., Implementing Student e-Portfolios in Higher Education: A Transdisciplinary Perspective (Springer, 2017).

D. SHORTER WORKS

• ‘China and Treaty Port Imperialism,’ in The Encyclopedia of Empire, edited by John MacKenzie. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016.

• ‘A Customs officer in the treaty port world: R.F.C. Hedgeland’s photographs.’ International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter. 44 (Feb 2008).

• ‘The World of the Chinese Maritime Customs.’ In Robert Bickers, Catherine Ladds, Jamie Carstairs and Yee Wah Foo, Picturing China 1870-1950: Photographs from British Collections. Bristol: Chinese Maritime Customs Project Occasional Papers, No. 1, 2007.

• (01/2014-06/2018) ‘Children of Empire: The History of Eurasians in China, Hong Kong, and Britain, c. 1830-1960,’ supported by an ECS grant.

• (01/2017-12/2021) ‘Marginal People in Liminal Places: Non-Elite Europeans in Colonial-Era East Asian Port Cities,’ supported by a GRF grant.