East Asian Studies appoints new lecturer in Chinese Studies

East Asian Studies at Leeds is delighted to announce the appointment of Dr Tim Thurston to a lectureship in Chinese Studies.

Tim obtained his BA in Chinese at Carleton College, and both his MA and Ph.D. at The Ohio State University in 2015. After graduating, Tim has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Institution, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, with a team developing the Center’s project to develop cultural sustainability and linguistic vitality programming in Tibetan-inhabited regions of China. He speaks Chinese and Amdo Tibetan.

Tim’s research examines the languages and cultures of ethnic minority communities in China as they navigate the forces of tradition and modernity, with an emphasis on Tibetans. His current project examines the development of a wildly popular genre of Tibetan comedy in Northeastern Tibet between 1980 and 2010, and their role in shaping Tibetan ideas about tradition, modernity, and language in the Post-Mao period. Tim’s other research interests include everydayness, oral traditions, folklore, hip-hop, digital culture, and intangible cultural heritage in ethnically plural regions of Western China.

Tim will join the University of Leeds on 1 September.