Niki Joseph Paul Alsford

Prof. Niki J.P. Alsford is Professor in Asia Pacific Studies and Head of Asia Pacific Institutes; being Director of the Institute for the Study of the Asia Pacific; Co-Director of the International Institute of Korean Studies and the Northern Institute of Taiwan Studies; and Chair of the Centre for Austronesian Studies. He is also Research Associate at the Centre of Taiwan Studies at SOAS, University of London and Research Fellow at the Ewha Institute of Unification Studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. He received his PhD in Modern East Asian History from SOAS. As a historical anthropologist his research focuses on comparative ethno-histories. Chief among these is an engagement with developmental anthropology in the case of North Korea and climate anthropology across the Pacific. He is author of Transitions to Modernity in Taiwan: The Spirit of 1895 and the Cession of Formosa to Japan, published by Routledge in 2017. He is book series editor for the Taiwan series at BRILL and the Korean series at Routledge.