Kent Deng
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dr. Kent G. Deng, is a British lecturer living in London who holds the position of Reader in the Economic History Department of the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE), where he has worked since 1996. He is a member of the Asian Research Centre and has been Secretary of the History and Economic Development Group UK since 2000.
Kent was born in Beijing, China, and educated in Peking University and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; he also studied economic history in La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia under the eminent economic historian Eric L. Jones. Kent Deng's Ph.D. thesis went on to win "Best Thesis on Pre-19th Century Economic History" from the International Economic History Society at the XIth International Economic History Congress, Milan, 1994. His wife and fellow alumnus, Dr. Lucy H. Feng, pursued her Ph.D. in Biological Sciences at La Trobe, too.
Kent played on the La Trobe volleyball team and earned a Mandarin-English professional translation qualification. He was the founding Mandarin instructor at La Trobe's Language Centre, where he also worked as a residential tutor. The next three years saw Kent as a journalist at Radio Australia and the birth of his son Alexander.
From 1991 to 1993 he held the post of lecturer in Economic History at Flinders University of South Australia, and from there he went on to become senior lecturer in Economic History at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He has published widely in the field of Chinese maritime history and pre-modern trade. His current research concerns the economic history of South-East Asia, focussing on the comparison between China and the West in pre-modern and early modern history and the economic role of the Chinese peasantry.
His published books include:
- The Chinese Premodern Economy: Structural Equilibrium and Capitalist Sterility. 1999
- Maritime Sector, Institutions and Sea Power of Premodern China. 1999.
- Chinese Maritime Activities and Socioeconomic Development, c. 2100 B.C. - 1900 A.D. 1997
- Development Versus Stagnation: Technological Continuity and Agricultural Progress in Pre-modern China. 1993
