Hans van de Ven did his undergraduate studies in Sinology at Leiden University, then went to Harvard University for his PhD in modern Chinese history, followed by a UC Berkeley Postdoctoral Fellowship. He has been at Cambridge University ever since. His most recent book is Breaking with the Past: The Maritime Customs Service and the Global Origins of Modernity in China (Columbia University Press, 2014). Van de Ven's first book, From Friend to Comrade: the Founding of the Chinese Communist Party (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), was awarded the Philip Lilienthal Prize of the University of California Press for best first book in Asian Studies.
A British Academy Research Readership made it possible for van de Ven to spend three years away from teaching. One of these he spent as a Visiting Scholar at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan. More recently, he was a Fellow for a year at the Johns Hopkins—Nanjing University Center for US-China Cultural Exchange. Van de Ven also is Guest Professor at the Department of History of Nanjing University and a Fellow of the British Academy.
