Image: Congratulations to Bill Kelson (PHD '24), recipient of the Ron and Yvette Walcott Excellence in Fine Arts and Humanities Doctoral Research Award. Bill Kelson is a Postdoctoral Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), where he is a Visiting Assistant Professor. He is currently working to turn his Ph.D. dissertation, a wide-ranging history of the Chinese financial crisis of the 1880s, into a book manuscript. His study, researched at archives in Shanghai, Taipei, London, and Hong Kong, explores the ways in which China’s integration into global capitalism in the late-nineteenth century made the Chinese financial system increasingly fragile, as well as the consequences of that financial fragility for Chinese society writ large. Dr. Kelson’s first peer-reviewed publication, “Manias, Panics, & Land: The Property Bubbles of the Great Chinese Crash of the 1880s,” was recently published in a special issue of Business History titled The Global Economy & the Origins of Modern Chinese Business, edited by John D. Wong, Ghassan Moazzin, and Kang Jin-A. Dr. Kelson was educated at Emerson College, Boston College, the University of Georgia, and IUP Tsinghua. He earned his Ph.D. in History at the University of Georgia in 2024, working under major professor Dr. Stephen Mihm. His research has been supported by the Luce Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Fulbright-Hays Program, the John E. Rovensky Fellowships in International Business & Economic History, and the Henry Kaufman Financial History Fellowship Program, as well as a UGA Graduate School Dean’s Award.
