William Julian’s work concerns the changes in perceptions and portrayals of the northwest (西北) during the Republican Period. He seeks to locate these sources not only within broader Chinese discourses on borderlands, but also within their global context, examining the ways in which foreign knowledge-making practices helped to frame narratives about the situatedness of the region within Chinese history.

William graduated from UNC—Chapel Hill, and holds an M.A. in Anthropology from Columbia University. He has over two years of life experience in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and comes to Harvard via Yunnan Province, where he was Communications Officer for the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences.