My academic interests relate to the history of science, exploration and empire, using interdisciplinary approaches to draw upon insights from historical geography and cultural anthropology. I am interested in how biographical studies and microhistory can be used to tell stories which inform larger social and global historical perspectives.

My PhD research focussed upon the Sino-Tibetan borderlands during the first half of the twentieth century. I looked at the lives and careers of Westerners and Indigenous peoples from a wide range of social and professional backgrounds who engaged in scientific exploration, examining the ways in which they represented themselves through the practices of travel writing, photography and collecting.

My research continues to pursue and develop ways of understanding the history of European, Russian, American, and Japanese incursions into China and other areas of East Asia, examining imperial and colonial knowledge gathering systems in relation to extraterritoriality and ‘informal empire,’ as well as islands and borderland regions, exploring East/West cultural perceptions, encounters and exchange, and cross-cultural relationships and identity. I’m also interested in mountain environments (particularly the Himalaya), and the histories of material cultures of collecting in relation to botanical gardens, museums and archives, as well as cultural diplomacy. 

PhD thesis title: "Empirical Adventurers: Science and Imperial Exploration in East Tibet, 1900-1949."
Tim Chamberlain – Birkbeck College, University of London, 2024.
PhD supervisors: Prof. Julia Lovell (Birkbeck College, University of London), and Prof. Naoko Shimazu (Tokyo College, University of Tokyo).

I am also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.