Macabe Keliher
Associate Professor
Director of Undergraduate Studies
| Office Location |
Dallas Hall Room 59 |
| Phone |
(214) 768-2998 |
Education
Ph.D., Harvard University, 2015M.A., George Washington University
B.A., University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Research
Macabe Keliher is a historian of early modern and modern China. His book on symbolic power in early modern China, The Board of Rites and the Making of Qing China, is an institutional history of the formation of the Qing empire. It received the Tso Shun-sheng award from Academia Sinica and the Joseph Levenson Prize honorable mention from the Association for Asian Studies.
He is currently working on a book on postwar economic development in East Asia, tentatively titled Economic Warfare and Manufacturing Capacity in Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan, 1950-1990. The project re-examines the world’s greatest economic growth story through the case of Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan by asking a simple question: How do newly industrialized countries acquire manufacturing capacity? Converse to traditional interpretations of markets or states, his research shows how countries locked in economic warfare worked transnationally to develop upstream industries and spur the manufacturing capacity of neighboring states.
Abridgment of Roberto Unger's The Religion of the Future. Dallas: Bridwell Publishing, 2023.
The Board of Rites and the Making of Qing China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019.
He is currently working on a book on postwar economic development in East Asia, tentatively titled Economic Warfare and Manufacturing Capacity in Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan, 1950-1990. The project re-examines the world’s greatest economic growth story through the case of Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan by asking a simple question: How do newly industrialized countries acquire manufacturing capacity? Converse to traditional interpretations of markets or states, his research shows how countries locked in economic warfare worked transnationally to develop upstream industries and spur the manufacturing capacity of neighboring states.
Books
Abridgment of Roberto Unger's The Religion of the Future. Dallas: Bridwell Publishing, 2023.
The Board of Rites and the Making of Qing China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019.
Selected Articles
- “Taiwan Machinery Manufacturing Corporation and the Role of State Firms in Economic Development,” Enterprise & Society, (December 2025): 1-33.
- “Ritual in the Early Modern World: Proliferation, State-Formation, and the Work of the Manchu Surrender Ceremony,” Journal of World History, 35.3 (September 2024): 377-406.
- “Hong Kong’s Political Economy and the Crisis of Democracy,” in Essays on China and U.S. Policy, edited by Lucas Myers. Washington D.C.: Wilson Center, 2022: 226–60.
- “Mass Protests and the Structure of Power in Contemporary Hong Kong.”China Review International 26.1-2 (2021): 1-37.
- “The Problem of Imperial Relatives in Early Modern Empires and the Making of Qing China,” American Historical Review 122, no. 4 (October 2017): 1001–37.
Selected Fellowships and Grants
Taiwan National Science and Technology Council, 2024
Taiwan Fellowship, 2023
Fulbright Research Scholar, Taiwan, 2022-2023
Wilson Center China Fellow, 2021-2022
Sam Taylor Fellowship, 2020
Sue Tsao Endowment Fund in Chinese Studies, 2019
Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS, 2018-2019
National Endowment for the Humanities, summer 2017
Indiana University Maurer School of Law Jerome Hall Fellow, 2015-2016
Fulbright Institute of International Education Research Grant, 2011-2012
Sue Tsao Endowment Fund in Chinese Studies, 2019
Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS, 2018-2019
National Endowment for the Humanities, summer 2017
Indiana University Maurer School of Law Jerome Hall Fellow, 2015-2016
Fulbright Institute of International Education Research Grant, 2011-2012
