Craig Clunas


Alistair Craig Clunas is Professor Emeritus of History of Art at the University of Oxford. As a historian of the art and history of China, Clunas has focused particularly on the Ming Dynasty.

Life

Clunas attended Aberdeen Grammar School from 1959 to 1972, which was followed by a Diploma with Distinction in spoken and written modern Chinese from the Peking Languages Institute in Beijing. He next majored in Chinese Studies at the University of Cambridge as an undergraduate, graduating with a BA in 1977 and afterwards went to the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London where he wrote his PhD dissertation on Injanasi's "Nigen Dabqur Asar": a Sino-Mongolian novel of the 19th century under the supervision of Charles Bawden. Clunas began his scholarly career at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where for 15 years he was on the curatorial staff and was responsible for the installation of new Chinese galleries. In 1994, he moved to the University of Sussex, where he became Professor of History of Art in 1997. In 2003, he returned to SOAS where he was the Percival David Professor of Chinese and East Asian Art from 2004.
He took up his current position at the University of Oxford in 2007. He is the first holder of the Chair in the History of Art to specialise in art from Asia. He is currently Professor Emeritus of the History of Art, University of Oxford.
He has contributed to radio programmes including In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg and A History of the World in 100 Objects with Neil MacGregor.

Publications

Clunas has published extensively on early modern China, his books include: