About Dr Alison Hardie

After degrees in Classics at Oxford and Chinese at Edinburgh, I went to China for a year of postgraduate study and then started working with the Hong Kong trading firm Jardine Matheson in their Beijing Office. I ended up working for Jardines and other international companies for a total of 16 years in both China and Hong Kong, mostly on either engineering-related or catering projects. I then returned to the U.K. to take a Master's at Oxford and a doctorate at Sussex, doing research on the history of Chinese garden design. I made a career switch to academia and taught at Newcastle University for six years before moving to Leeds in 2006.

Recent Activities

I was invited to give the keynote address at an international workshop, ‘Infinite Worlds – The Cultural Biography of Chinese Classical Gardens’, in connection with the 10th anniversary of the Lan Su Yuan Chinese garden in Portland, Oregon, in April 2010.

As a Senior Fellow in Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, I attended a committee meeting in Washington DC in January 2011 to assess applications for one-year and summer fellowships at Dumbarton Oaks. Applicants’ projects ranged from an aviary in ancient Rome to a sacred grove in Nigeria to Rationalist architecture in Soviet Russia.

Key Publications and Activities

Books

• My 1988 translation of Ji Cheng’s 17th-century manual of Chinese garden design, The Craft of Gardens (Yuanye), long out of print, will soon be reissued by Shanghai Press & Publishing Development Company.
• Introduction and revision of text for new edition of Chen Congzhou, On Chinese Gardens, Reader’s Digest Association, 2009.

Book Chapters

• Washing the Wutong Tree: Garden Culture as an Expression of Women's Gentility in the Late Ming. In: Daria Berg & Chloe Starr, eds., The Quest for Gentility in China: Negotiations beyond gender and class, London: Routledge, 2007.
• Conflicting discourse and the discourse of conflict: eremitism and the pastoral in the poetry of Ruan Dacheng (c.1587-1646). In: Daria Berg, ed. Reading China : Fiction, History and the Dynamics of Discourse – Essays in Honour of Professor Glen Dudbridge . Leiden : E.J.Brill, 2006.
• Ji Cheng's Yuan Ye (The Craft of Gardens) in its social setting. In: The Authentic Garden: a Symposium on Gardens 1990, Leiden , the Netherlands : The Clusius Foundation.
  

Translations

• ‘Another Aspect of Chinese Rural Christianity – based on a field survey of a rural church in north Henan province’ (translation of paper by Li Shunhua), China Study Journal, Autumn/Winter 2008.
• Yuan Huang's Record of the Hall Surrounded by Jade of Master Sitting-in-Reclusion (translation and introduction). Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landsc ap es , vol.25, no.1, January- Marc h 2005.
• The Life of a Seventeenth-Century Chinese Garden Designer: The Biography of Zhang Nanyuan, by Wu Weiye (1609-71). Garden History 2004, 32 (1).
• You Xilin. Modernity and Secularity: the dual significance of Christianity for China's modernisation. China Study Journal , vol.18, nos.1 & 2, August 2003.
• Xing Fuzeng. Church-State Relations in Contemporary China and the Development of Protestant Christianity. China Study Journal 2003, 18 (3), 19-48.
• Yang Huilin. Some Characteristics of the Understanding of the Christian Faith among Contemporary Chinese University Students. China Study Journal 2002, 17 (3), 5-12.
• Hu Yinglin's [1551-1602] 'Connoisseurs of Flowers': Translation and Commentary. Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes 1999, 19 (3/4).
• Liang Jialun. Rural Christianity and Chinese Folk Religions. China Study Journal 1999, 14 (2), 22-34.
• Ji Cheng. The Craft of Gardens . New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1988.

Conferences and Conference Papers

• 'Ji Cheng's Yuan Ye ( The Craft of Gardens ) in its social setting', The Authentic Garden Symposium, Leiden, Netherlands , May 1990.
• 'The Spirit of the Metropolis, the Spirit of the Countryside and the Spirit of Suburbia: Garden Sites in Ming China', XIII European Association for Chinese Studies conference ‘The Spirit of the Metropolis', Turin, Italy, August 2000.
• 'Washing the Wutong Tree: Garden Culture as an Expression of Women's Gentility in the Late Ming', conference on Perceptions of Gentility in Chinese Literature and History, University of Durham, 21-23 March 2002.
• 'Gardens in the poetry of Ruan Dacheng (1587-1646)', XIV Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies, Moscow , August 2002.
• '"Massive structure" or "spacious naturalness"? Aesthetic choices in gardens of the Wang families in Taicang' , conference on 'The World of Wang Shizhen: Cultural Politics and Political Culture in 16th Century China', International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden , 13-14 June 2003.
• 'Issues of Identity in Ruan Dacheng's Spring Lantern Riddles / Ten Cases of Mistaken Identity (1633)', XVII Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies, Ljubljana, September 2006.

Invited Speaker

• Guest lecturer on tour of Chinese gardens in Zhejiang and Jiangsu for Friends of the Chinese University Art Gallery , Hong Kong , May 1993.
• 'Pictorial representations of gardens in 16th -17th century China', The Oriental Ceramic Society, London, April 2003.
• Seminar on Chinese gardens in seminar series: Historical and Cultural Backgrounds of the Medieval Japanese Garden (sponsored by National Endowment for the Humanities), Holy Cross College , Worcester , Massachusetts , April 2004.
• 'Chinese Gardens', Frederik Meijer Botanical Gardens, Grand Rapids, Michigan, April 2004
• 'Gardens of China : Design and Culture', Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester , June 2004
• 'Heaven, Earth and Man: Traditional Belief Systems in Chinese Gardens', Clusius Foundation, Leiden , March 2006.

Other Activities

• Board Member, European Association for Chinese Studies.
• Participant in working group on anthology of Chinese texts on gardens in English translation, Dumbarton Oaks (Studies in Landscape Architecture), Washington DC, 1999-2003.
• Former Council Member, British Association for Chinese Studies (2003-2006).

Teaching

Undergraduate

• EAST1050 (EAST1051/EAST1052/EAST1053) Imperial China (convenor)
• EAST2070 (EAST2082/EAST2083) Chinese History 1900-1979 (convenor)
• EAST3520 Chinese Business (convenor)
• EAST3190 Visual Cultures in Modern Chinese Society

Postgraduate

• MODL5312M01 Specialised Chinese-English Translation (technical translation)
• EAST5201M Chinese Business I

PhD Supervision

My Translation Studies student based in Newcastle was awarded his doctorate in 2010 and is now teaching Translation Studies at Baptist University in Hong Kong. 

I am currently supervising one Leeds student working on the role of faith-based organisations in the development of civil society in China, and co-supervising a student at Sheffield.

Guidance on PhDs can be found in the Research Postgraduate pages.