Nora is a historian of modern East Asia, specializing in the period from 1600 to 2000. Her research examines the social interactions among diverse communities in the Qing Empire, the Republic of China, and the People’s Republic of China, with particular attention to the ways power and identity shaped social and economic development. She also engages with broader questions on the roots of inequality and the processes of modernization, and she conducts her research across nine languages.
She is a member of the European Research Council funded GloCoBank project at the University of Oxford, which explores the global history of banking and finance. GloCoBank seeks to compile and analyze extensive datasets and combining them with archival research, thus creating a comprehensive resource for studying the patterns and dynamics of international banking. As part of her role in GloCoBank, Nora is leading publications on East Asia’s banking and correspondent networks, with forthcoming six outputs in the form of book chapters and journal articles.
Her current projects extend beyond GloCoBank with four major areas: the material culture of Qing, Republican, and contemporary China; legal pluralism and borderland governance in the Qing Empire; the origins of East Asia’s payment systems and international trade; and the environmental, political, and economic history of Jiangbei.
Nora's first academic monograph, "Living the Qing Way: Objects, Power, and Identity in Late Imperial China" which is in preparation with Cornell University Press, scrutinizes the cultural and ethnic identity of the elite in the Qing Empire. Focusing on material culture, it examines the Qing elite's possessions, as recorded in confiscation inventories, to provide insights into their identity, through dress, household goods and cultural and literary activities. The findings challenge the theory of Han assimilation, suggesting that the Manchu elite preserved a distinct cultural identity separate to their Han peers. It also uncovers evidence of a unified hybrid Qing culture shared by Manchu and Han senior officials that was distinct from the Manchu and Han cultures that persisted among the populace. Signs of this "unified" Qing culture existed more widely in the public sphere. In the domestic sphere, it was evident only in the homes of wealthy senior officials. The remaining elite Han and Manchus continued to adhere distinctly to their ancestral ways of living.
Nora received her Ph.D. in Economic History from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2022. Before joining UCL as a member of the permanent research and teaching faculty, lecturer/assistant professor in 2024, she taught at both the LSE and the University of Oxford.
