Geoff Humble

Currently in the second year of a PhD under the supervision of Professor Naomi Standen at the University of Birmingham, working on Mongol historiography and the politics of its portrayal of networks and individuals during the reign of Ögödei Qa'an. Last year I had the great good fortune to take part in the ERC Mobility, Empire and Cross-Cultural Contacts in Mongol Eurasia project at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I spent the year 2011-12 at the Shida Mandarin Training Centre 國立台灣師範大學國語教學中心 in Taipei in preparation for this (thanks to the Taiwanese Government's Mandarin Enrichment Scholarship, administered in the UK by BACS).

My research interests include Central and Inner Asian languages and cultural practices across medieval and early modern Eurasia. I am particularly interested in the expression of ‘nomad’ and ‘sedentary’ aspects of identity in Chinese, Persian and Chaghatay historiography and prosopography, especially in the Yuanshi, Tārīkh-e Jahāngušāī, Jāmi’ut-Tawārīkh, Secret History of the Mongols and the Bāburnāma. I am also interested in translation, ghost stories, scripts and palaeography.