02 May 07

Dr Rana Mitter, University Lecturer in the History and Politics of Modern China and Fellow of St Cross, has been granted a Research Leadership Award from the Leverhulme Trust. These major new grants are to support successful academics in building a team to develop innovative research that changes the entire approach to the study of a particular topic.

Dr Mitter's research proposal, entitled The persistence of conflict: China's war with Japan and its impact, memory and legacy, 1931 to the present, looks at the lasting effect of the Second World War on China, which led to massive devastation with the loss of 15 million lives, and how this has affected China's development through the 20th century and into the present day.

The research will be carried out over the next five years by an inter-disciplinary team of historians and social and political scientists that will be put together over the next few months.

The Leverhulme Trust permitted UK universities to put in one bid each for these Awards with 85 bids placed in total. Dr Mitter's bid won an internal competition within Oxford and stands out nationally amongst the 12 successful bids as one of only two covering humanities and social science rather than hard science.

Commenting on the proposed research, Dr Mitter said, 'This project is possible thanks to the many changes that have taken place in China over the last quarter of a century, such as the opening of new archives, that have allowed more discussion and study of this period. These opportunities and the need for the West to engage with China in the present and the future mean that this is the ideal time to initiate this research. The project is unique in providing a long-term perspective on the impact of the Sino-Japanese conflict and in viewing the development of modern China primarily through that conflict.'

The Award is an indicator of Oxford's strength in East Asian studies generally, a strength enhanced by recent new appointments in both Chinese and Japanese history. Oxford is playing a leading role in the British Inter-University China Centre (BICC) and is also engaged in a major international co-operation project with Princeton University in the US in the form of a comparative study of post-war reconstruction in Europe and East Asia after 1945.