Home / Profiles / Ryan Sun

About

Ryan Sun is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at UBC working with Prof. Leo Shin and Prof. Richard Menkis. My transnational project expands the geography of Jewish exile outside Europe and beyond Shanghai, and onto the British colonies of Hong Kong and Singapore. I adopt a refugee-centered approach that highlights the agency and mobilities of Austrian and German-Jewish refugees in formulating their escape plans, while slowly becoming entangled with the wartime policies of British colonial administrations, and their eventual internment and expulsions from both colonies. I consider how the distinct experiences of Jewish refugees in Hong Kong and Singapore have been ignored or subsumed within more standard narratives. I am particularly interested in Jewish refugees’ ship-bound experiences, especially how transiting colonial port-cities and encountering local inhabitants informed their understanding of ‘the Orient’, as well as how these ship-moments disrupt the standard narratives of the Holocaust and survivor testimonies.

Teaching

Publications

Journal articles

  • Cheuk Him Ryan Sun, “Between Viennese childhood and Shanghai survival: Gerda Gottfried’s Poesiealbum as a palimpsestic object,” Journal of Holocaust Research 39, vol. 1 (January 2025). Forthcoming.
  • Cheuk Him Ryan Sun, “The Holocaust and Hong Kong: An Overlooked History,” Journal of Holocaust Studies 29, vol. 3 (2023): 393-413. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17504902.2022.2057118.

Book Reviews

  • Review of “Kathryn Hellerstein and Song Lihong (eds.), China and Ashkenazic Jewry: Transnational Encounters (Munich: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2022), 359 pp., $89.99.” PaRDeS: Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies in Germany no. 29 (2023): 181-184.

Other writings

Public lectures

Awards

Select Awards and Scholarships

  • SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
  • 2022-2023 Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellowship, USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research, University of Southern California
  • Fritz Thyssen Pre-Dissertation Fellowship, Pacific Regional Office of the German Historical Institute
  • Conway Summer Travel Scholarship in German History, University of British Columbia
  • Four Year Fellowship, University of British Columbia
  • SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship Master’s Award
On this page
About
Teaching
Publications
Awards

Ryan Cheuk Him Sun

PhD Candidate
email rchsun29@student.ubc.ca
Twitter
launchWebsite
Thematic Research Area
Empire & Colonialism | Global & International History | Migration, Borderlands, & Transnational History | Race, Ethnicity, & Nationalism
Regional Research Area
Asia | Europe

About

Ryan Sun is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at UBC working with Prof. Leo Shin and Prof. Richard Menkis. My transnational project expands the geography of Jewish exile outside Europe and beyond Shanghai, and onto the British colonies of Hong Kong and Singapore. I adopt a refugee-centered approach that highlights the agency and mobilities of Austrian and German-Jewish refugees in formulating their escape plans, while slowly becoming entangled with the wartime policies of British colonial administrations, and their eventual internment and expulsions from both colonies. I consider how the distinct experiences of Jewish refugees in Hong Kong and Singapore have been ignored or subsumed within more standard narratives. I am particularly interested in Jewish refugees’ ship-bound experiences, especially how transiting colonial port-cities and encountering local inhabitants informed their understanding of ‘the Orient’, as well as how these ship-moments disrupt the standard narratives of the Holocaust and survivor testimonies.

Teaching

Publications

Journal articles

  • Cheuk Him Ryan Sun, “Between Viennese childhood and Shanghai survival: Gerda Gottfried’s Poesiealbum as a palimpsestic object,” Journal of Holocaust Research 39, vol. 1 (January 2025). Forthcoming.
  • Cheuk Him Ryan Sun, “The Holocaust and Hong Kong: An Overlooked History,” Journal of Holocaust Studies 29, vol. 3 (2023): 393-413. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17504902.2022.2057118.

Book Reviews

  • Review of “Kathryn Hellerstein and Song Lihong (eds.), China and Ashkenazic Jewry: Transnational Encounters (Munich: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2022), 359 pp., $89.99.” PaRDeS: Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies in Germany no. 29 (2023): 181-184.

Other writings

Public lectures

Awards

Select Awards and Scholarships

  • SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
  • 2022-2023 Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellowship, USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research, University of Southern California
  • Fritz Thyssen Pre-Dissertation Fellowship, Pacific Regional Office of the German Historical Institute
  • Conway Summer Travel Scholarship in German History, University of British Columbia
  • Four Year Fellowship, University of British Columbia
  • SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship Master’s Award

Ryan Cheuk Him Sun

PhD Candidate
email rchsun29@student.ubc.ca
Twitter
launchWebsite
Thematic Research Area
Empire & Colonialism | Global & International History | Migration, Borderlands, & Transnational History | Race, Ethnicity, & Nationalism
Regional Research Area
Asia | Europe
About keyboard_arrow_down
Ryan Sun is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at UBC working with Prof. Leo Shin and Prof. Richard Menkis. My transnational project expands the geography of Jewish exile outside Europe and beyond Shanghai, and onto the British colonies of Hong Kong and Singapore. I adopt a refugee-centered approach that highlights the agency and mobilities of Austrian and German-Jewish refugees in formulating their escape plans, while slowly becoming entangled with the wartime policies of British colonial administrations, and their eventual internment and expulsions from both colonies. I consider how the distinct experiences of Jewish refugees in Hong Kong and Singapore have been ignored or subsumed within more standard narratives. I am particularly interested in Jewish refugees’ ship-bound experiences, especially how transiting colonial port-cities and encountering local inhabitants informed their understanding of ‘the Orient’, as well as how these ship-moments disrupt the standard narratives of the Holocaust and survivor testimonies.
Teaching keyboard_arrow_down
Publications keyboard_arrow_down

Journal articles

  • Cheuk Him Ryan Sun, “Between Viennese childhood and Shanghai survival: Gerda Gottfried’s Poesiealbum as a palimpsestic object,” Journal of Holocaust Research 39, vol. 1 (January 2025). Forthcoming.
  • Cheuk Him Ryan Sun, “The Holocaust and Hong Kong: An Overlooked History,” Journal of Holocaust Studies 29, vol. 3 (2023): 393-413. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17504902.2022.2057118.

Book Reviews

  • Review of “Kathryn Hellerstein and Song Lihong (eds.), China and Ashkenazic Jewry: Transnational Encounters (Munich: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2022), 359 pp., $89.99.” PaRDeS: Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies in Germany no. 29 (2023): 181-184.

Other writings

Public lectures

Awards keyboard_arrow_down

Select Awards and Scholarships

  • SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
  • 2022-2023 Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellowship, USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research, University of Southern California
  • Fritz Thyssen Pre-Dissertation Fellowship, Pacific Regional Office of the German Historical Institute
  • Conway Summer Travel Scholarship in German History, University of British Columbia
  • Four Year Fellowship, University of British Columbia
  • SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship Master’s Award