Emeritus Professor Pierre-Étienne Will (Collège de France) Invited to Give the 2025 “Fu Ssu-nien Lectures”
Pierre-Étienne Will, PhD (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales [EHESS], 1975), is Professor Emeritus of the History of Modern China at the Collège de France. Lauded as a renowned Sinologist and historian, Prof. Will began his career researching at EHESS in 1969, where he was promoted to Director of Studies in 1988. Other notable appointments include serving as Chair of the History of Modern China, Collège de France, from 1991 to 2014, and as one of the editors of T’oung Pao, the long-established European journal on Sinology, from 1992 to 2016, among many others.
Prof. Will’s research fields encompass the socio-economic history and political institutional history of Ming and Qing China, with particular focus on populations and livelihoods in modern China, irrigation and water conservancy systems, granary management, and interactions between central and local government authorities. His notable works include Bureaucratie et famine en Chine au 18e siècle (1984; trans., Bureaucracy and Famine in Eighteenth-Century China, 1990; trans., 十八世紀中國的官僚制度與荒政, 2003), Nourish the People: The State Civilian Granary System in China, 1650–1850 (co-authored, 1991), La Chine et la démocratie: Tradition, droit et institutions (co-edited, 2007; trans., China, Democracy, and Law: A Historical and Contemporary Approach, 2011), and Handbooks and Anthologies for Officials in Imperial China: A Descriptive and Critical Bibliography (2020). In 2022, Prof. Will was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society. Prof. Will is invited give a series of three lectures as the 2025 Fu Ssu-nien Lecturer. (more information can be accessed at the IHP official website)
