Matthew Hurst
Thesis
Thesis
Informal Diplomacy, Civil Society and the End of the Empire: The Secret History of How Hong Kong People Shaped the City’s Handover from Britain to Beijing, 1979-97
Supervisors: David Clayton and Jon Howlett
Research
Research
Recent large-scale protests have focused global attention on the public’s dissent in Hong Kong. However, political contestation during the Sino-British negotiations over Hong Kong’s future and slow transfer remains overshadowed in the existing literature by a focus on elite political actors. This PhD goes beyond the elite political level to analyse how Hong Kong public opinion, civil society actors and business leaders interacted with the politics of Hong Kong’s decolonisation and explores political actors/civil servants responded to assess the extent to which Hong Kong people shaped the handover.
This work was supported by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (grant number AH/R012733/1) through the White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities.
Publications and presentations
Publications and presentations
Peer-reviewed publications
Forthcoming. ‘Constitutional Change’ in Florence Mok and Fung Chi Keung Charles (eds.) A New Documentary History of Hong Kong, 1945-1997. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, chapter 2.
2024. ‘Rethinking Transnational Activism through Regional Perspectives: Reflections, Literatures and Cases’. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. https://doi.org/10.1017/
2024. ‘Negotiating with the Past: China’s Tactical Use of History, Emotion and Identity in the Sino-British Talks on the Future of Hong Kong’. East Asia 41(2) pp. 183-199. https://doi.org/10.1007/
2022. ‘Britain’s Approach to the Negotiations over the Future of Hong Kong, 1979-1982’. The International History Review 44(6) pp. 1386-1402. https://doi.org/10.1080/
Book reviews
Forthcoming. ‘A Free Press, If You Can Keep It: What Natural Language Processing Reveals About Freedom of the Press in Hong Kong’ by Giovanna Dore, Arya McCarthy and James Scharf. Pacific Affairs.
2024. ‘Liberate Hong Kong: Stories from the Freedom Struggle’ and ‘Umbrella: A Political Tale from Hong Kong’ by Brian Kern. Asian Affairs 55(1): pp. 147-149. https://doi.org/10.1080/
2023. ‘Among the Braves’ by Shibani Mahtani and Timothy McLaughlin. Asian Affairs 54(4) pp. 819-821. https://doi.org/10.1080/
2023. 'Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong' by Louisa Lim. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong 63 pp. 328-331. https://www.jstor.org/stable/
2023. ‘Making Hong Kong China’ by Michael C. Davis. Hong Kong Studies 3(2). https://cup.cuhk.edu.hk/image/
Presentations
Sep 2024 New Perspectives on Displaced Colonial Archives workshop, Northumbria University and Waseda University
Jun 2024 British Postgraduate Network for Chinese Studies 2024 annual conference, University of York (also organisation committee and panel chair)
May 2024 Hong Kong Studies Association 2024 Conference, University of Sheffield
May 2024 International History Seminar of the North, University of Leeds – invited
Apr 2024 Hong Kong Inside Out
Mar 2024 Association for Asian Studies Virtual Conference
Feb 2024 British Postgraduate Network for Chinese Studies PGR Scholarship Seminar – invited as part of receiving a BPCS Scholarship
Jan 2024 History Department PGR Conference, University of York
Mar 2023 Historical Perspectives Roundtable, University of Glasgow
Mar 2023 Transnational Activism in a Divided World workshop, Northumbria University – with support from the Royal Historical Society
Dec 2022 Politics Department Colloquium, University of York – invited
Jun 2022 Hong Kong Forum, Oxford University Hong Kong Scholars Association
Jun 2022 Symposium on Emotions and Foreign Policy in Global International Relations, Universidad de Navarra
Dec 2021 Association for Asian Studies New England Conference, Harvard University
Sep 2021 British Association for Chinese Studies Conference, University of Birmingham
Jun 2021 British Postgraduate Network for Chinese Studies Conference, Lancaster University
Support
WRoCAH
Royal Historical Society Support for Doctoral Researchers
James Jarvis Memorial Bursary (twice)
The Universities’ China Committee in London (UCCL)
British Postgraduate Network for Chinese Studies (BPCS) Postgraduate Research Scholarship
