Michael A. Szonyi (Chinese: 宋怡明; pinyin: Sòng Yímíng; born May 18, 1967) is Professor of Chinese History at Harvard University and former director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. His research focuses on the local history of southeast China, especially in the Ming dynasty, the history of Chinese popular religion, and Overseas Chinese history.^[1]

Biography

Szonyi received a BA from the University of Toronto and a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. After completing his doctorate, he worked at McGill University, later moving to University of Toronto, where he received tenure in 2002. Szonyi came to Harvard in 2005, and was named John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities in 2007 and Professor of Chinese History in 2009.^[2] Today he splits his time between Cambridge and London, Ontario, where his wife, Francine McKenzie, is a professor of international relations at the University of Western Ontario.^[3] Szonyi was appointed director of Harvard's Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies in 2015.^[4]

Publications

• The China Questions: Critical Insights into a Rising Power. Harvard 2018. (Co-edited with Jennifer Rudolph)
• The Art of Being Governed: Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China. Princeton, 2017
• A Companion to Chinese History. Wiley Blackwell, 2017
• The Cold War in Asia: The Battle for Hearts and Minds. Brill, 2010. (Co-edited with Zheng Yangwen and Liu Hong)
• Cold War Island: Quemoy on the Front Line. Cambridge University Press, 2008. (Chinese Edition: NTU Press 2016)
• Ming-Qing Fujian Wudi xinyang ziliao huibian (Documents on the Cult of the Five Emperors in Fujian in Ming and Qing). Hong Kong University of Science and Technology South China Research Centre, 2006.
• Practicing Kinship: Lineage and Descent in Late Imperial China. Stanford University Press, 2002.
• Zheng Zhenman, Family and Lineage Organization and Social Change in Ming-Qing Fujian, translated and with an introduction by Michael Szonyi. University of Hawai'i Press, 2001.