Meet the Team
The COTCA Project is managed by a multidisciplinary team, all based at the University of Nottingham’s History Department. Biographical information on individual Team members can be found below.
Jeremy E. Taylor
Professor Taylor is the Director of the COTCA Project, and is Professor of Modern History at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of over 30 peer-reviewed chapters and journal articles in leading history and Area Studies outlets (including, most recently, the Journal of Asian Studies). His books include Rethinking Transnational Chinese Cinemas: The Amoy-dialect Film Industry in Cold War Asia (Routledge 2011); Visual Histories of Occupation: A Transcultural Dialogue (Bloomsbury 2021); Iconographies of Occupation: Visual Cultures in Wang Jingwei’s China, 1939-1945 (University of Hawaii Press, 2021); and (with Lanjun Xu) Chineseness and the Cold War (Routledge 2021).
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Stéphanie Benzaquen-Gautier
Stéphanie Benzaquen-Gautier received her PhD at the Erasmus University Rotterdam (‘Images of Khmer Rouge atrocities, 1975-2015’), and was associate researcher at the university’s Centre for Historical Culture for several years. Her research interests include visual culture and the representation of large-scale and structural violence and human rights, documentary and artistic practices in the context of memory politics, ghosts and haunting, with a focus on Southeast Asia. Stéphanie also works as curator and has organised exhibitions and events in various countries. She has conducted research as Fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien and the ICI Institute for Cultural Inquiry in Berlin (2018-2019), the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC (2012), the Stone Summer Theory Institute at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago (2010), and at the Theory Department at Jan van Eyck Academie in the Netherlands (2005-2006). She is co-founder of the international research group DK-Memosis, dedicated to the study of memorialisation in Cambodia. Her work has appeared in Cinéma & Cie, Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust, Mémoires en Jeu, Journal of Perpetrator Studies, Kunstlicht, and Media, Culture & Society.
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Kim Weir
Kim Weir obtained an undergrdauate degree in American and English Studies at the University of Nottingham, then completed a Masters in Art Gallery and Museum Studies at the University of Manchester. After graduating, she spent eight years working in the museums and visual arts sectors in the UK and Australia. Her PhD (under Stream 1 of COTCA) explores how US colonial rule in the Philippines (1902 to 1946) shaped the public monuments erected in the country throughout the twentieth century, and how these have affected the way in which particular Philippine historical events have been memorialised and remembered.
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L. Odila Schroeder
L. Odila Schroeder joined the COTCA Project in 2017. She studied Chinese, Political Science and History of Science at Heidelberg and Cambridge, and holds an MA in Chinese and Transcultural Studies from Heidelberg University. During her studies, she has worked to promote Chinese language education, monitored socioeconomic conflicts in China for the Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research, and studied the circulation of European music theory in 20th century China. Odila is particularly interested in everyday sounds, musical performance and repertoire, cultural elite networks, and the use of digital and performative research methodologies. Her PhD project (under Stream 2) aims to account for musical life and choral singing as political practice in occupied Beijing (1937-1945).
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Vivien Chan
Vivien Chan is a design historian and design practitioner. She studied Illustration & Animation at Kingston University before completing a Masters in History of Design at the Royal College of Art and the Victoria & Albert Museum. During her studies, she worked as a freelance illustrator and filmmaker, as well as producing several online and print publications on design history and its interdisciplinary approaches. More recently, she lectured in Design Studies at Nottingham Trent University, and represents the Design History Society as Ambassador. Her PhD (under Stream 3 of COTCA) explores Hong Kong’s spaces of leisure and consumption from the 1950s to 1980s, considering their role in the everyday life of the city during British colonial rule.
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David Baillargeon
Dr Baillargeon is Assistant Professor in History at the University of Texas Arlington. He completed his PhD in Modern British History from the University of California – Santa Barbara in 2018. His dissertation, entitled ” ‘A Burmese Wonderland’: British World Mining and the Making of Colonial Burma”, focuses on the Burma Corporation, a transnational mining corporation whose operations were located in the Northern Shan States of British Burma during the early twentieth century. His work has been supported by a Mellon Fellowship from the Institute of Historical Research in London, a Dissertation Fellowship from the University of California Center for New Racial Studies, and a Mellon Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the Council for European Studies. His work has been published in Abolition and Slavery, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History and other fora. He is leading Stream 3 (“Spaces of Occupation”) of the COTCA Project, and created the Spaces of the Malayan Emergency Digital Map on this site.