Jack Patrick Hayes
BA (CC), MA (Hawaii), PhD (UBC)
Jack Hayes joined Kwantlen Polytechnic University in 2013 and is a research associate with the Centre for Chinese Research at UBC’s Institute of Asian Research. Dr. Hayes’ research focus is on late imperial and modern Chinese environmental history, resource development and ethnic relations in western China, and environmental policy development in East Asia. Dirt, whisky and beer in history, fire and tourism development are also part of the research mix. Dr. Hayes also serves on several editorial boards, including Pacific Affairs. He has published a number of articles on Chinese environmental history, most recently on fire ecosystems and Chinese society (socio-ecological resilience), World War I and East Asia, and wetlands in Chinese history. His book A Change in Worlds on the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands (Lanham, MA: Lexington, 2013) is a social and environmental history of Sino-Tibetan north Sichuan. His current research manuscript analyzes policy development, science, and wildfire management in China and he is writing a history textbook on natural and human-induced environmental disasters. When not ‘doing’ history, Dr. Jack enjoys single malt whisky, fly fishing, and fun with family and friends.
Current Favorite Novels, Movies and Podcasts
Steven Erikson Malazan Book of the Fallen series & Ian Esslemont Malazan Empire & related series
Iain Banks’ Culture Novels
Ben Lieberman & Elizabeth Gordon, Climate Change in Human History (Bloomsbury, 2018)
Rob DeSalle, A Natural History of Beer, Rod Phillips, Alcohol: A History, and Amy Stewart, The Drunken Botanist
Karen Gordon, The Deluxe Transitive Vampire
Iza Ding’s “Performative Governance in China” (World Politics 72:4, 2020), also on Jude Blanchette’s “Pekingology” podcast: https://www.csis.org/node/63605.
Courses taught
- HIST 1150: Beyond the Middle Kingdom: An Introduction to Traditional East Asia
- HIST 1190: Explorations - Brewing Civilizations A Globall History of Fermentations
- HIST/ASIA 2156: Martial Arts of China & Japan
- HIST 2350: Late Imperial China
- HIST/ASIA 2351: Opium, Alcohol, & Tobacco in Asian History & Culture
- HIST/ASIA 2355: The Chinese Overseas
- HIST/ASIA 2359: Tea in Asia (formerly, Tea in China & Japan)
- HIST 2375: Japan Under the Shoguns 1600-1868
- HIST 2380: Introduction to Global Environmental History
- HIST/ASIA 3140: Environment and Society of East Asia
- HIST/ASIA 3150: East Asian Immigrants to North America
- HIST 3180: Environmental History of North America
- HIST 3350: China in the Twentieth Century: Reforms and Revolutions
- HIST 3370: Modern Japan
- HIST 4450: China & the West
- HIST 4499: Special Topic: Chinese History and Biography
- RECENT TOPICS COURSES
- Pop Culture History in East Asia (China, Japan, and Korea)
- Chinese History and Biography
- Rebellion & Society in China
- China’s Environmental History
- The Empires of Rome and China
Areas of Interest
When not ‘doing’ history, Dr. Jack enjoys single malt whisky, fly fishing, and fun with family and friends.
Scholarly Work
- A Change in Worlds on the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands: Politics, Economies, and Environments in Northern Sichuan. (Lanham, MA: Lexington [Rowman] 2013). ISBN-13: 978-0739173800
- Catastrophes and Environments: Natural and Human Disasters in Modern Global Environmental History (London: Taylor & Francis, forthcoming 2024)
- The Fires on the Horizon: Rural and Wildfire Landscapes in China's Environmental History (forthcoming 2025)
- “Strategic Openings and Ecosystem Exploitation: The Environmental Legacy of World War I in East Asia,” in Richard Tucker, Martin Schmid, Tait Keller, & John McNeill (eds.), Environmental Histories of the First World War (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
- "Fire on the Hills: An environmental history of fires and fire policy in Mediterranean-type ecosystems." Jack Hayes, M. Pereira, C. Miller, D. Orenstein, in Conference Proceedings: 2nd World Congress on Environmental History (ICEHO, Portugal 2014), Springer, August 2015.
- “From Great Green Walls to Deadly Mires: China's Western and Northeastern Wetlands as Military Environments and Ecosystems.” Water History, 5:1 (2013): 7-26.
- “Modernisation with Local Characteristics: Development Efforts and the Environment on the Zoige Grasslands and Wetlands, 1949-2005.” Environment & History, 16:3 (August 2010).
- Open-Ed “chapters” (Asia Pacific Foundation): “The Opium Wars in China” [2018]; “Chinese Migration and the 19th Century” [2019]. http://asiapacificcurriculum.ca/
- “Forests and History in Late Imperial China: A review article of Ian Miller’s Fir and Empire: The Transformation of Forests in Early Modern China and Meng Zhang’s Timber and Forestry in Qing China” in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 82.2 (2022).
- “Fire Suppression and the Wildfire Paradox in Contemporary China: Policies, Resilience, and Effects in Chinese Fire Regimes,” in Human Ecology: Special Issue, Resilience, Response, and Reclamation in the Ecology and Environment of China. (author & co-editor, with Denise Glover & Steven Harrell) (Online 2020, Spc Issue 2021, DOI: 10.1007/s10745-020-00183-z)