Major Fellowship win for East Asian Studies dissertation

PhD student Tsz Ho Wong has received 30,000 USD for his financial history thesis.

When we last spoke to Tsz Ho (Brian) Wong in 2023, he was a first year PhD candidate in East Asian Studies co-organising the third International Symposium for Young Scholars in Asia Seas.

Now, three years on, Tsz Ho has been awarded a 30,000 USD Henry Kaufman Financial History Dissertation Fellowship for the latter stages of his doctoral research.

Awarded by the Business History Conference (BHC), the Fellowship supports candidates to complete a dissertation that “engages meaningfully with financial history in any time period or region of the world”.

Tsz Ho is particularly interested in the history of modern East Asia, with a focus on economic history, intellectual history and histories of science and technology. His dissertation examines the economic and financial mobilisation of the Japanese Empire during WWII, looking at the consequences for Japan’s home islands and its wartime colonies, including his native Hong Kong.

Photo of Tsz Ho at a lectern giving a presentation
Tsz Ho presenting his research at an early career and doctoral workshop at St Hilda's College, University of Oxford, in March 2025. Photo courtesy of the workshop organiser, the Global Correspondent Banking project.

Absorbing debates and methodologies

At the University of Edinburgh, Tsz Ho is supervised across the Schools of Literatures, Languages and Cultures (LLC) and History, Classics and Archaeology (HCA).

Asked why he chose Edinburgh, and how he finds being based in two different schools, he says the expertise of his supervisors - Professor Aaron William Moore in LLC and Dr Felix Boecking in HCA - was a major factor, underpinned by the “numerous archival materials collected by the University libraries”.

He tells us “Just as [my Principal Supervisor] Professor Moore is a transnational and comparative social historian, being supervised by staff from different parts of the university gives me the opportunity to absorb debates and methodologies from different disciplines of historical studies and to conduct research from a broader, comparative and transnational perspective.”

“Edinburgh is also a beautiful city, which I’ve loved since I first visited in the summer of 2019.”

Building a conference and publication base

Building a solid foundation in research takes time, and Tsz Ho has been developing his profile since studying for his Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Hong Kong.

As far back as 2019, he attended his first Hong Kong Young Historian Institute (HKYHI) event, an Undergraduate Conference on Historiography. Then, following his move to the UK for a masters at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), he began attending the Institute’s International Symposia for Young Scholars in Asia Seas.

Building on this participation, and speaking at other events too, Tsz Ho moved into conference organisation at LSE, making him ideally placed to be invited onto the preparatory committee for the third HKYHI symposium for young scholars during his first year at Edinburgh.

Most recently, he has co-organised a panel session on Globalizing Hong Kong Business History at the 2026 BHC Meeting, presenting on "The Money Wormhole: Hong Kong and the Yen Bloc During the Pacific War", and had his nascent thesis findings published in Financial History Review.

To me, the [Henry Kaufman Financial History Dissertation] Fellowship is not only an acknowledgement of my research project, but more importantly, the people that have laboured innumerable contributions, which I am thankful for. In particular, I would like to thank Professor Moore for his guidance and patience, as well as all of the LLC postgraduate research community for their support.

Tsz Ho Wong speaking about his recent success

Are you interested in postgraduate research in Asian Studies?

Our interdisciplinary community brings together specialists in the languages, literatures, cultures and politics of China, Japan and Korea with experts in East Asian and international relations. Working with colleagues elsewhere in LLC, and across the wider University, we are able to support research which crosses boundaries between disciplines and/or languages.

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Asian Studies
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