About

Dr Kuan-Jen “KJ” Chen (陳 冠任/チン　カンニン/진관임) is a historian specialising in the Cold War history, modern East Asian history, maritime history, and US foreign policy. He holds a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge. Currently, he is Assistant Research Fellow (Assistant Professor) at Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. Dr Chen’s academic articles have appeared in Cold War History, The Journal of American-East Asian Relations, Cold War International History Studies(冷戰國際史研究), Bulletin of Academia Historica(國史館館刊), and Being Nearby—Discussions on Modern China—(近きに在りて). Dr Chen was also invited to give several talks in China, France, Japan, Taiwan, the US, the UK, and the Netherlands.

Dr Chen was born in Taipei, Taiwan. Prior to Cambridge, he obtained a BA and MA in History at National Chengchi University in Taiwan. Thereafter, he served as a corporal (Military Police) at Chung Shan Institute of Science and Technology to fulfill his compulsory military service between 2011 and 2012. After his military service, Chen taught history in junior high schools in 2013. In 2014, he began to pursue his PhD in History at Cambridge. Two years later, Dr Chen was selected as a Japan Foundation Fellow to carry out archival research for his dissertation in the University of Tokyo. After obtaining his PhD in history in 2019, Dr Chen joined the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Cambridge to carry out his postdoctoral research. Dr Chen taught Cold War history and modern East Asian/Chinese history for undergraduate and graduate students. In 2021, he relocated to Denmark to take his second academic appointment as a Research Fellow of Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen. Dr Chen has published his first book: Charting America’s Cold War Waters in East Asia: Sovereignty, Local Interests, and International Security (Cambridge University Press, 2024. The winner of the 41st Masayoshi Ōhira Memorial Prize; Finalist of the 2025 CPH Book Prize). In this book, Dr Chen challenges conventional narratives of Cold War East Asia that disproportionately focus on land as a structural imperative in grand strategic thinking. He argues that sovereignty, local interests, and America’s international security concerns not only defined the restless arena of maritime East Asia, but also revealed the Janus-faced nature of US hegemony in Cold War East Asia. Dr Chen is carrying out his second book project: G.I. Joe in Cold War Taiwan: A Transnational History.This book will comprehensively dissect the hitherto largely neglected role the presence of American GIs played in shaping Cold War Taiwan.