My doctoral thesis, 'Ambiguous Nationality: British Subjects of Chinese descent, 1879-1962', focuses on the suspicion and anxiety with which British officials viewed their subjects identified as Chinese on the one hand, and the ways in which these subjects asserted their nationality across a range of legal and bureaucratic means. More widely, my research touches upon the uneven development of British and Chinese nationality law, questions of dual nationality, border-crossing, and mobility. 

In the past I have been and continue to be broadly interested in nation, race, and ethnicity in the imperial context, particularly where such categories dovetail with everyday interactions between the colonial state and the individual. I am also interested in the colonial archive and its materiality, and in mobility within and between empires.