Dear colleagues and friends, Please join me in welcoming a new member, Eric Lee, to the Song-Yuan listserv. Below please find his self introduction. Welcome, Mr. Lee! My name is Eric Lee. I am a first-year Ph.D. student from the History department at Cornell, studying with Professor TJ Hinrichs. For my BA and MA, I studied with Professors John Chaffee and Robert Hymes, respectively. I mostly work on the Song Dynasty, with a specific focus on its political institution, political culture, local societies, and religious culture. My research interest lies at the intersection between political institutions at the top and local power formation at the bottom. This interest has taken me to look at how the protection privilege (the yinbu 蔭補 system) was used as a means to reproduce political legitimacy and to enhance local prestige in the case of of the She 折 family of Fuzhou 府州 (in modern-day Shaanxi). The Shes, either Tangut or Turkic in origin, thanks to the protection privilege, geopolitical circumstances, and active Sinicization, were able to remain powerful for more than two centuries, weathering through the Northern Song political culture that generally looked down upon military elite and distrusted ethnic minorities. By situating the She family and other similar families against the backdrop of the Tang-Song-Jin transition, I intend to further examine the state vs. local relationship in North China’s multiethnic environment. Happy February, Ya Zuo Secretary, Society for Song, Yuan, and Conquest Dynasties Studies