Yuan Julian Chen received her PhD from the Department of History at Yale University. Before joining Duke, she was a Visiting Professor at Boston College teaching classes on early China and food history. Her current research focuses on the history of environment in premodern and early modern East Asia. She is currently working on a book manuscript, tentatively titled "Kaifeng: What it Took to Feed, Furnish, and Fortify the World's Largest City, 900-1200." It explores the environmental changes of Middle Period of China from the view of Kaifeng, China's imperial capital, and its ecological and economical connections with its diverse supplying regions in China and beyond. Her work has been published in the Journal of Early Modern History, the Journal of Chinese History, theJournal of Song-Yuan Studies, and Chinese Culture. Her research has been supported by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange. She speaks Chinese and Japanese and reads Classical Chinese and Tangut. Her teaching interests include Chinese history, Tokugawa Japan, early modern global history, environmental history, and the Silk Road.