Contact Info:
Breland 245
Associate Editor. Journal of Chinese History, Cambridge University Press
Affiliated Scholar, Team Leader, Visual Materials in Chinese Local Gazetteers, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
Education:
B.A. History & Political Science: Kent State University, 1985
A.M. Regional Studies – East Asia: Harvard University, 1989
Ph.D., History & East Asian Languages: Harvard University, 1994
Research and Teaching Interests:
Ken Hammond received his B.A. from Kent State University in History and Political Science. In 1982 he traveled to China and spent the next five years working with American student programs and educational delegations in Beijing. Dr. Hammond received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in History and East Asian Languages in 1994 and has taught at New Mexico State University ever since. He specializes in the history of China in the Early Modern period, especially the 16th century. He has published numerous books and articles on Chinese intellectual and political history, and his book Pepper Mountain: The Life, Death and Posthumous Career of Yang Jisheng, 1516-1555 came out in 2007. In 1999 Dr. Hammond was a research fellow at the Institute of History at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, and in 2002-03 he was a visiting fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden, the Netherlands. From 2007 to 2015 he was co-director of the Confucius Institute at New Mexico State. Since 2017 he has been affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. He has been a lecturer for the National Geographic Society and for the Smithsonian Institution in China, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia. His latest book, China’s Revolution and the Quest for a Socialist Future was published in May 2023.
Dr. Hammond’s current research is on China’s historical political economy, especially in the early modern period (900-1800), and on the history of market towns and urban development in China.
Selected Publications:
Courses:
HIST 1140G Global History since 1500
HIST 471/571 China through the Ming
HIST 473/573 History of Japan
HIST 475/575 History of Global Political Economy
HIST 591 Modernity and its Discontents
