Song-Chuan Chen

Song-Chuan Chen is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Warwick, Faculty of Arts. He specializes in modern Chinese global history, focusing on social-political history from below, Cold War dynamics in Taiwan, and the history of Sino-British trade relations. His research integrates macro and micro perspectives, emphasizing ordinary people’s agency within broader geopolitical shifts.

Chen holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge (2009) and has held positions at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore, 2011–2017) and the University of Bristol (2008–2011). He was awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2022–2023) and a Teaching Award at Nanyang (2017).

His research projects include the Cold War in Taiwan and the history of the Canton trade. He examines archival sources, fieldwork interviews, and legal documents to explore themes like British traders’ roles in shaping knowledge of China, Chinese workers in global trade networks, and the socio-political impacts of historical events like the Opium War.

Chen supervises PhD students on topics including British commercial communities in Canton, the First Opium War, and early 20th-century Shanghai’s working class. He teaches modules such as 'China and the West before the Opium War' and 'Modern China in Eight Events,' integrating virtual reality tools like the Thirteen Factories Icube project.

His publications span books, journal articles, and encyclopaedia entries, with notable works including Merchants of War and Peace (2017) and contributions to Past and Present and Modern Asian Studies.