Dr. Isabella Jackson
Assistant Professor, History
Biography
I arrived at Trinity in 2015, after lecturing at the Universities of Aberdeen and Oxford and earning my PhD at the University of Bristol. I research the modern history of China and am Principal Investigator on an Irish Research Council Laureate Award, CHINACHILD: Slave-girls and the Discovery of Female Childhood in Twentieth-century China. Together with a team of researchers, I am researching how controversies over keeping unpaid domestic servants (binü 婢女 or mui tsai) reflect changing and expanding conceptions of Chinese childhood.
My previous publications focus on the global and regional networks that shaped the treaty ports, which were opened to foreign traders by force in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Publications and Further Research Outputs
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Isabella Jackson and Siyi Du, The Impact of History Textbooks on Young Chinese People's Understanding of the Past: A Social Media Analysis, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 2022
Isabella Jackson, Shaping Modern Shanghai: Colonialism in China's Global City, paperback, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2019, 1 - 274pp
Isabella Jackson, Shaping Modern Shanghai: Colonialism in China's Global City, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2018, 1 - 274pp
Habitability in the Treaty Ports: Shanghai and Tianjin in, editor(s)Toby Lincoln and Xu Tao , The Habitable City in China: Urban History in the Twentieth Century , New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp169 - 191, [Isabella Jackson]
Introduction in, editor(s)Robert Bickers and Isabella Jackson , Treaty Ports in Modern China: Law, Land and Power, London, Routledge, 2016, pp1 - 22, [Robert Bickers and Isabella Jackson]
The Shanghai Scottish: Scottish, Imperial and Local Identities, 1914-41 in, editor(s)T. M. Devine and Angela McCarthy , The Scottish Experience in Asia, c.1700 to the Present: Settlers and Sojourners, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp235 - 257, [Isabella Jackson]
Who ran the treaty ports? A study of the Shanghai Municipal Council in, editor(s)Robert Bickers and Isabella Jackson , Treaty Ports in Modern China: Law, Land and Power, London, Routledge, 2016, pp43 - 60, [Isabella Jackson]
Robert Bickers and Isabella Jackson, Treaty Ports in Modern China: Law, Land and Power, 1, London, Routledge, 2016, 1 - 320pp
Isabella Jackson (杰逸), 南京路上的影印统治：条约口岸上海的锡克巡捕 Nanjing Lu shang de Ying-Yin tongzhi: tiaoyue kou'an Shanghai de Xike xunbu ('The Raj on Nanjing Road: Sikh Policemen in Treaty-Port Shanghai'), 上海市国际论丛Shanghai shi guoji luncong (International Review of Shanghai History), 2, 2015, p63 - 92
Expansion and defence in the International Settlment at Shanghai in, editor(s)Robert Bickers and Jonathan J. Howlett , Britain and China, 1840-1970, London, Routledge, 2015, pp187 - 204, [Isabella Jackson]
Isabella Jackson, Chinese Colonial History in Comparative Perspective, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 15, (3), 2014
Isabella Jackson, The Raj on Nanjing Road: Sikh Policemen in Treaty-Port Shanghai, Modern Asian Studies, 46, (6), 2012, p1672 - 1704
Non-Peer-Reviewed Publications
Isabella Jackson, Review of An Urban History of China, by Toby Lincoln , Urban History, 50, (3), 2023, p613-615
Isabella Jackson, Navigating Semi-Colonialism: Shipping, Sovereignty, and Nation-Building in China, 1860"1937 by Anne Reinhardt, Review of Navigating Semi-Colonialism: Shipping, Sovereignty, and Nation-Building in China, 1860"1937 , by Anne Reinhardt , English Historical Review, 135, (578), 2021, p224-226
Isabella Jackson, Improvised City: Architecture and Governance in Shanghai, 1843"1937 by Cole Roskam, Review of Improvised City: Architecture and Governance in Shanghai, 1843"1937 , by Cole Roskam , The China Quarterly , (241), 2020, p286-288
Isabella Jackson, Sold People: Traffickers and Family Life in North China. By Johanna S. Ransmeier , Review of Sold People: Traffickers and Family Life in North China, by Johanna S. Ransmeier , Journal of Asian Studies, 77, (1), 2018, p241-242
Isabella Jackson, Grace, Opium and Empire: The Lives and Careers of William Jardine and James Matheson, Review of Opium and Empire: The Lives and Careers of William Jardine and James Matheson, by Richard Grace , Scottish Historical Review, 96, (1), 2017, p132-33
Isabella Jackson, Review of Quest for Power: European imperialism and the making of Chinese statecraft, by Stephen R. Halsey , Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 18, (3), 2017
Isabella Jackson, Review of China's Foreign Places: The Foreign Presence in China in the Treaty Port Era, 1840-1943 , by Robert Nield , China Quarterly, 225, 2016, p279-81
Isabella Jackson, Review of Shanghai Sanctuary: Chinese and Japanese Policy toward European Jewish Refugees during World War II, by Gao Bei , Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , 7, (2), 2014, p422-3
Isabella Jackson, Review of The New Asian City, by Jimi Kim Watson , Urban History, 39, (4), 2012, p689-90
Research Expertise
Description
I research the modern history of China with two main areas of interest: the history of Chinese childhood and the history of foreign colonialism in China. My Irish Research Council Laureate Award 'CHINACHILD: Slave-Girls and the Discovery of Female Childhood in Twentieth-Century China' (2018-2023, 400,000) examines changing conceptions of Chinese childhood in the twentieth century, particularly during the Republican era (1912-1949). As PI, I reveal what understanding experiences of and changing responses to child slavery reveal about conceptions of childhood and girlhood. My earlier work focuses on the global and regional networks that shaped the treaty ports, which were opened to foreign traders by force in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My monograph, 'Shaping Modern Shanghai: Colonialism in China's Global City' (Cambridge University Press, 2018) revealed the transnational form of colonialism in practice in Shanghai's International Settlement (1863-1943) and how it functioned on the ground in the Shanghai Municipal Council. My co-edited volume, 'Treaty Ports in Modern China: Law, Land and Power' (Routledge, 2016), explored the various structures of power in the different treaty ports along China's coast and waterways. I have also worked on the interconnections between China and the British World, especially India, through my work on the Sikh policemen who worked in Shanghai, and have an ongoing interest in the Chinese and foreign experience of the Opium War.Projects
- Title
- CHINACHILD: Slave-girls and the Discovery of Female Childhood in Twentieth-century China
- Summary
- Funded by Irish Research Council Laureate Award IRCLA/2017/251, the CHINACHILD project explores changing conceptions of Chinese childhood in the twentieth century, focusing particularly on the Republican era (1912-1949). See https://chinachild.wordpress.com/ for more details.
- Funding Agency
- Irish Research Council
- Date From
- 01 Sep 2018
- Date To
- 31 Sep 2023
Recognition
Awards and Honours
IRC Laureate Award
Royal Irish Academy Charlemont Grant
Grace Lawless Lee Fund award
Grace Lawless Lee Fund award
Carnegie Trust Research Incentive Grant (returned due to leaving Scotland)
British Inter-university China Centre AHRC award of £10,000 to lead the Chinese Urban Studies Network
Excellence in Teaching Award, University of Aberdeen - nominated
Annual Faculty Prize for Best Dissertation in the Arts
Library of Congress AHRC/ESRC Scholarship
Worldwide Universities Network Award
Paula Sandri Prize in Recognition of Innovative and Original Research
British Inter-university China Centre ESRC full 2+3 scholarship
British Association of Chinese Studies Scholarship for Chinese Language Study at the Mandarin Training Center, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei
Memberships
Association for Asian Studies
Irish Association for Asian Studies
British Association for Chinese Studies
Universities' China Committee in London