Peter Roy Harmsen

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The title of my PhD project is "Laurits Andersen, the birth of modern China and the rise and fall of the pioneering generation 1870-1920: A historical and biographical case study of the shifting requirements of business entrepreneurship in a cross-cultural setting undergoing turbulent change."

My PhD project is part historical biography, part social science. I write about the life and career of Danish entrepreneur Laurits Andersen (1849-1928), a pioneer among foreign businessmen in the Tianjin and Shanghai areas around the turn of the 20th century. While seeking the facts of his life in historical archives in Denmark, China and the United States, I also aim to demonstrate how social science methodology linked to social network analysis and entrepreneur studies can be helpful in illuminating the past.

In addition, my primary research interests are the following:

- The Second Sino-Japanese War (1931-1945)

- Republican China

- Biography as a literary genre

- Collective biography

- Social network analysis