Hello everyone, Please join me in welcoming a new member of the Song-Yuan Listserv, Dr. Mark Strange! Below is the self introduction he kindly shares with us: Mark Strange teaches courses in Chinese history, Literary Chinese, and Sinology at the Australian National University. His primary research interests lie in the intellectual history of the eleventh century. His particular focus is the historiography and political thinking—and the connexions between the two—of the mid-eleventh century. Mark is currently engaged in three projects that focus on Sima Guang 司馬光 (1019-1086) and his Zi zhi tong jian 資治通鑑. This was initially the topic of his doctoral studies at the University of Oxford and has since continued to occupy him. Two of Mark’s current projects are selected translations of Zi zhi tong jian. The first is a critical translation of Sima Guang’s comments in Zi zhi tong jian, with an attempt to frame those comments as contributions specific political and intellectual debates of the eleventh century. The other is a translation of the first eight juan of Zi zhi tong jian, which cover the late Zhou and Qin periods. Mark is separately engaged on a monograph study of Sima Guang’s historiographic thought and its relation to the intellectual environment of its compilation. A fourth research project is a collaboration with Esther Klein on a selected translation of Shi tong 史通 by Liu Zhiji 劉知幾 (661-721). Mark has secondary interests in the period of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, between the fourth and the sixth centuries. He has published studies of Emperor Wu of Liang 梁武帝 (464-549) and a collaborative translation of the sixth-century Da sheng qi xin lun 大乘起信論. Sincerely, Ya Zuo Secretary, Society for Song, Yuan, and Conquest Dynasties Studies