Stephen R. Halsey’s scholarship focuses on the intersection of state power, economic development, and environmental change in late imperial and modern China (1850–present). He completed his doctoral work at the University of Chicago and currently serves as an associate professor of history at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. Halsey’s first book, Quest for Power: European Imperialism and the Making of Chinese Statecraft historicizes the country’s seemingly sudden political and economic ascendance after 1990.

At the time of his fellowship, Halsey was working on a second book manuscript entitled Prometheus Bound: Environmental Crisis and the Developmental State in Modern China. It uses the “elements” of minerals, water, soil, and air in a series of four case studies to examine the environmental constraints on China’s growth in the twentieth century. He argues that government authorities preferred a technocratic approach to development, but time and again ecological limitations in place before the onset of modern growth forced them to employ an “involutionary” strategy defined by inefficient, low-tech, and labor-intensive principles. Halsey has received the following fellowships in support of his research: the Fulbright Senior Scholar Grant (China), Taiwan Fellowship, Fulbright-Hays DDRA Fellowship, Blakemore Foundation Language and Language Refresher Grants, FLAS, and Earhart Foundation Fellowship.