A Personal History of Home Collaborators
Dr Jennifer Wong
Visiting Fellow
Born and grew up in Hong Kong, Jennifer is the author of several collections including 回家 Letters Home (Nine Arches Press) and Diary of a Miu Miu Salesgirl (Bitter Melon Poetry). 回家 Letters Home has been named the PBS Wild Card Choice by Poetry Book Society. She studied at University College, Oxford and has earned a creative writing PhD from Oxford Brookes University. Her poems, translations and reviews have appeared in or are forthcoming from Wasafiri, Poetry Review, Poetry London, Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, Oxford Poetry, Magma Poetry, World Literature Today, The Rialto, PN Review, Asian Review of Books, Asian Cha, anthologies and others. She has taught at Poetry School, Oxford Brookes University, City Lit and Lingnan University of Hong Kong. She was the writer-in-residence at Wasafiri in 2021. In collaboration with Wasafiri and other partners, she curated the first digital Poetics of Home Chinese Diaspora Poetry Festival 2021, funded by Arts Council. Since March 2020, she ran an online poetry reading series called What We Read Now which featured a diverse range of emerging and established poets.
Dr Jennifer Altehenger
Project Lead
Jennifer Altehenger is Associate Professor of Chinese History and Jessica Rawson Fellow in Modern Asian History at Oxford (History Faculty and Merton College). Her research focuses on the history of modern and contemporary China; in particular the history of materials and industrial design, of law and civic education, and of cultural production and print culture. She is the author of Legal Lessons: Popularizing Laws in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1989 (Harvard University Asia Center, 2018) and has published articles and chapters on the history of socialist trade exhibitions, furniture design, lexicography, political satire, and other aspects of modern Chinese history. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy, she is now writing a book - Revolutionary Designs: Furnishing Life in Socialist China - on the history of design and industry in China following the end of World War II. The book tells the stories of women and men who helped materialise modern China: as designers and producers in research institutes, factories, handicraft workshops and homes, or as users who made and altered objects, furnished interiors, and found creative solutions in times of material shortage. Jennifer is also editor of the online resource "The Mao Era in Objects" (https://maoeraobjects.ac.uk). The website introduces the history of China after 1949 through object biographies and is aimed at educators, students, and anyone interested in the history of modern China.
