Jack Hayes

Background

About Jack Hayes

I am currently lecturer (professor and department chair 2019-Sept 2022) at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey and Richmond, BC. At Kwantlen I teach history courses with emphasis on late imperial and modern China, early modern and modern Japan, and global and East Asian environmental history. I am also research associate for the Center for Chinese Research at UBC's Institute of Asian Research. With IAR I am primarily involved in research on China's environment and environmental policies. I am a review and manuscript editor for several journals, and former associate editor (China) for Pacific Affairs and former assistant editor (reviews) for Environmental History. I received my BA from The Colorado College where I majored in History and minored in German Language & Literature and Asian Studies. I received my MA from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in East Asian History specializing in Chinese intellectual & legal history and 19th century Japanese history. I received my PhD from the University of British Columbia specializing in modern Chinese history. My research there focused on environmental change, political history, and social dynamics among western China's ethnic minority populations, especially Tibetans, Hui, & Han Chinese in borderland regions. I have one manuscript on the regional environmental, political, and social history of northern Sichuan (below) out in paperback, and a manuscript on the cultural and environmental history of fire in China underway. Other current projects include research on soil and landscape management associated with orchard and vine vegetation in the Pacific Northwest, social and ecological resilience related to wildfire and urban fire management in East Asia, and preliminary research on pedology/soils environmental history in imperial Chinese literature.