Peter Lavelle is a historian of late imperial and modern China. His research focuses on topics such as the environment, science and technology, agriculture, and imperialism. He is currently writing a book which explores the intellectual and material dimensions of Qing state-building and colonialism in the nineteenth century. In this book, he examines the environmental significance of agricultural technology, geographical thinking, and land-use policies in the northwest of the Qing empire in the aftermath of Muslim rebellions. His other research interests include the history of Chinese agricultural and horticultural sciences and Chinese ideas about population in the late imperial period. Dr. Lavelle received his Ph.D. in Chinese history from Cornell University. Before joining the faculty at Temple in 2014, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Modern History at Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan.

“Agricultural Improvement at China’s First Agricultural Experiment Stations,” in Denise Phillips and Sharon Kingsland, eds., New Perspectives on the History of Life Sciences and Agriculture (Cham, Switzerland: Springer International, 2015), 323-344.

“The Aesthetics and Politics of Chinese Horticulture in Late Qing Borderlands,” in Liu Ts’ui-jung, ed., Environmental History in East Asia: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (London: Routledge 2014), 213-242.

• East Asian Environmental History (HIST 2680)
• Contemporary China (HIST 3522)