Dr. Bobby Tam specializes in the history of death and history of emotions.

RESEARCH

Bobby’s doctoral research studies emotions surrounding death in British colonial settings in China during the nineteenth century. The work explores how people expressed and discussed emotions surrounding death in a colonial context where cultural norms were being actively contested. His previous works study how dead bodies were managed in early colonial Hong Kong. He has also written about the meanings and vocabulary associated with the dead body in urban China during the Late Qing and Early Republican period.

Research Interests

• History of death
• History of emotions
• British colonial history
• Late imperial and modern Chinese history

PUBLICATIONS

“Inventing Sacredness in a Colonial City: A British Garden Cemetery in Nineteenth-Century Hong Kong,” Urban History (2024): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1017/S096392682400052X

“Afterlife of the Wealthy: the burial of merchant communities in nineteenth-century colonial Hong Kong,” in Chronicling Westerners in Nineteenth-Century East Asia, edited by Robert S.G. Fletcher and Robert Hellyer (London: Bloomsbury, 2022), 105 – 124.

“Between Fear and Respect: Vocabulary and Meanings of the Dead Body in Urban China from the Late Qing to the Early Republican Era,” British Journal of Chinese Studies 12, no. 1 (2022): 20-39. https://doi.org/10.51661/bjocs.v12i1.144

TEACHING AND COURSES TAUGHT

• HIST1017 Modern Hong Kong
• HIST2209 Nineteenth-Century Colonial Hong Kong
• HIST2214 Death and the Dead in Modern History, 1800–2000
• HIST7023 Death and Dying in Hong Kong History (MA)
• HIST7024 History of Hong Kong Literature (MA)