Dr. Rui Hua

Biography

Rui Hua is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Boston University specializing in Modern East Asian History. With a deep fascination for transnational connections within this world region, Hua has developed a particular obsession with the Northeast Asian borderland known as Manchuria. His book project, tentatively titled 'Peasants Versus Empires: Transnational Civil Justice Legal ‘Decolonization’ Manchuria, 1881-1957,' delves into the lives of peasants, merchants, and vagabonds in this borderland, shaped by inter-imperial rivalries among China, Japan, and Russia. Through meticulous detective work, Hua investigates hundreds of legal battles that transcend borders and languages, revealing alternative narratives of the emergence of Northeast Asian legal modernity through vernacular legal engagements. His current work further examines the non-agrarian ecologies of the inhabitants—human and otherwise—that participated in constructing the Northeast Asian legal order in the twentieth century. In addition to his research, he teaches modern Chinese and Japanese history and methodologies of historical research. Previously, Hua earned his Ph.D. in History from Harvard University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Agrarian Studies at Yale, also having taught at the University of British Columbia, his alma mater. Passionate about historical research since his undergraduate days at Peking University in China and Waseda University in Japan, Hua welcomes new conversations surrounding history and education.

Research Interests

Experience