John Tsz-pang LAI 黎子鵬 (Fellow)
Fields of study:
Religion and literature in China; Theories and practices of religious translation; Biblical reception in Chinese contexts; Global Yijing (Book of Changes) studies.
Profile:
John Tsz-pang Lai is Professor in the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
John Lai received his B.A. (First honours) and M.Phil. degrees from the University of Hong Kong. As a recipient of Sir Edward Youde Memorial Fellowship for Overseas Studies, he earned his D.Phil. degree from the University of Oxford (2005). He was awarded the Harvard-Yenching Visiting Scholarship, Harvard University (2015–16); Keeley Visiting Fellowship, Wadham College, University of Oxford (2022–23), and Gale Scholar Asia Pacific Digital Humanities Oxford Fellowship (2025–26). He served as Associate Dean (Student Affairs) at the Faculty of Arts, CUHK (2020–22).
He has published six monographs and eight edited volumes, including Attuning the Gospel: Chinese Christian Novels of the Late Qing Period (2017), Literary Representations of Christianity in Late Qing and Republican China (2019), An Annotated Anthology of the Yijing Commentaries by the Early Qing Jesuit Joachim Bouvet (2020); Christian Yijing: A Critical Study and Annotated Edition of Yijing benzhi (Original Meaning of the Yijing) by Lü Liben, a Chinese Catholic Believer in the Qing Period (2024). His academic papers, over sixty, were published in international journals and edited volumes.
Having obtained the General Research Fund (GRF) for five times, John Lai is currently working on a major research project “The Global Yijing: The Cross-Cultural Translation and Transnational Reception of the Yijing (Book of Changes) in Western Religion and Literature,” Humanities and Social Sciences Prestigious Fellowship Scheme (HSSPFS), Research Grants Council, Hong Kong.