Dr Lance Pursey

lance.pursey@history.ox.ac.uk

I am a social historian investigating the role of cities in the empires of the medieval Eastern Eurasian steppe. My work brings textual, epigraphical, and archaeological sources into dialogue to investigate themes such as geography, mobility, identities, and the material conditions of the 10th to 13th century North China - Mongolia frontier zone under the Kitan Liao (907-1125CE) and Jurchen Jin (1115-1234CE) empires. I obtained my PhD in History from the University of Birmingham in 2020 with funding from the AHRC and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation. Before joining the Koch History Centre I have held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Birmingham, University of Aberdeen, Waseda University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Academia Sinica, and I have worked on projects funded by the AHRC, JSPS, ERC, and the British Library Endangered Archives Programme.