Rate My Professor Kevin Carrico

Kevin Carrico is Associate Professor of Chinese Studies in Monash University's School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics within the Faculty of Arts. He is a sociocultural anthropologist specializing in nationalisms and ethnic relations in China, Tibet, and Hong Kong. Carrico fuses ethnographic insights with literary and social theory to study the diverse nationalisms that have emerged in the Sinophone world since the fall of the Qing Empire. His research contributes to understanding identity politics and advancing nationalism theory. He earned his PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology from Cornell University in 2013, with a dissertation titled 'The imaginary institution of China: dialectics of fantasy and failure in nationalist identification, as seen through China's Han Clothing Movement.' His work has been supported by funding from the United States Department of Education, the Australian Research Council, and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange.

Carrico's key publications include his first monograph, The Great Han: Race, Nationalism, and Tradition in China Today (University of California Press, 2017), which examines a grassroots Han nationalist movement based on extensive fieldwork across China. His second book, Two Systems, Two Countries: A Nationalist Guide to Hong Kong (University of California Press, 2022), provides the first book-length English-language analysis of Hong Kong's independence movement and was translated into Chinese and republished in Taiwan in 2023 as 異國兩制: 從香港民族主義到香港獨立. He has also translated significant works, including Tsering Woeser's Tibet on Fire: Self-Immolations against Chinese Rule (Verso Press, 2016) and Guan Jun's Silencing Chinese Media: The Southern Weekly Protests and the Fate of Civil Society in China (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020). His peer-reviewed articles have appeared in journals such as The China Journal, Hong Kong Studies, Nations and Nationalism, Critical Inquiry, and Asian Cinema. As Principal Chief Investigator, he leads Australian Research Council projects on constructing Hong Kong national identity. Carrico was a columnist for Hong Kong's Apple Daily newspaper until its closure in 2021 under political pressure and has contributed to outlets including Foreign Policy, The Age, and Hong Kong Free Press. He accepts PhD students on topics including contemporary Chinese culture and politics, Hong Kong identity, and theories of nationalism.