Self-introduction

Dr Kuan-Jen "KJ" Chen is a historian specialising in the global Cold War, US Foreign Policy, and Modern East Asian History. Before joining the Institute of Modern History, he taught history, covering from Imperial Japan, WWII in Asia, modern China, the end of the French Empire in Indochina, and to Global Cold War, at the Universities of Cambridge and Copenhagen. Dr Chen has published his book Charting America's Cold War Waters in East Asia: Sovereignty, Local Interests, and International Security (Cambridge University Press, 2024) This book won the 41st Masayoshi Ōhira Memorial Prize (Japan) and the NASOH John Lyman Book Award in World Naval History. It has also been named a finalist of the 2025 CPH Book Prize (Southern Methodist University). 

Dr Chen's current book project is G.I. Joe in Cold War Taiwan: A Transnational History. Please visit his personal website for his updated CV. Dr Chen is also Fellow of Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland and Fellow of Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

Education

• PhD in History, Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, UK

My Website

Resumé

• 2022-present  Affiliated Researcher, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge, UK.
• 2021-2022  ADI-NIAS Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Political Science/Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
• 2019-2021  Isaac Newton Research Associate, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge, UK.

Academic honors

• Winner of the John Lyman Book Award in World Naval History
• Finalist of the 2025 CPH Book Prize
• The 41st Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize
• The SHAFR William Appleman Williams Emerging Scholar Research Grant, 2022
• Fellow, Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 2021
• The 2020 Gilder Lehrman Fellowship, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
• John A. Adams ’71 Center for Military History and Strategic Analysis at Virginia Military Institute Cold War Essay Contest Honorable Mention, 2019
• John Crump Scholarship, British Association for Japanese Studies, 2017-2018
• Sara Norton Grant from the University of Cambridge, 2015-2016, 2018
• Prince Consort Scholarship from the University of Cambridge, 2015-2017
• The Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation Fellowship, 2016-2017
• The Japan Foundation Fellowship, 2016-2017
• John A. Adams ’71 Center for Military History and Strategic Analysis at Virginia Military Institute Dissertation Grant, 2015

Research fields

• Global Cold War, US Foreign Policy, Modern East Asian History

Research projects

Publications