Mark Czellér
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow

Profile

Biography

Mark Czellér is a historian of twentieth-century China, with a focus on the political and social history of the Mao era. Before coming to York, he held a Past & Present Fellowship at the Institute of Historical Research (University of London) and a Departmental Lectureship in Modern Chinese History at the University of Oxford.

Research

Overview

Mark’s research interests concern policing, punishment, and political stigmatization in the Mao era. His current project, ‘Identification, Evasion, and Imposture in Maoist China,’ investigates how and why some people tried to falsify or conceal their identities in the three decades after 1949, and how the state built up its capacity to prevent them from doing so.  

Publications

Full publications list

Non-People in the People’s Republic of China (forthcoming with Cambridge University Press).

‘Between Civil Dispute and Political Crime: Property Rights and Practices of Denunciation in Maoist China’. The Journal of Chinese History, FirstView: 17 December 2025.

‘Filial Affection as Political Failing: The Children of Rural Class Enemies under the Maoist Emotional Regime.’ Modern China, Vol. 50, no. 1 (2024), 41-75.

‘Local Reassessment versus Central Prestige: Tao Zhu, Land Reform, and the Pine Hill Incident’. In Daniel Leese and Amanda Shuman (eds.), Justice after Mao: The Politics of Historical Truth in the People’s Republic of China (Cambridge University Press, 2023).