Yiwen Li

Yiwen Li is associate professor of history at City University of Hong Kong. She received her PhD in history from Yale University, and her dissertation won the Arthur and Mary Wright Prize for the best doctoral dissertation in non-Western history (2017). She earned her BA (2008) and MA (2011) from Peking University. In 2014–2015 and was a Japan Foundation Fellow at the Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University.

Her research interests include maritime East Asia, material culture, and the Buddhist monastic economy. Her first book, Networks of Faith and Profit: Monks, Merchants, and Exchanges between China and Japan, 839–1403 CE (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), was published as part of the Cambridge University Press’s “Asian Connections” series. Li has discussed her book in a podcast episode that can be found on the New Books Network website.

Li is currently working on her second project, “Sacred Crafts: Artisans and Buddhist Monasteries in China and Japan, 960–1368.” She is also a member of the Working Group “Ability and Authority.” Through Spring 2024, she is a Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at the MPIWG.