Dr. Jack Patrick Hayes is an Honorary Research Associate at the Centre for Chinese Research (CCR), the Institute of Asian Research at UBC’s School of Public Policy and Global Affairs. Jack teaches in the History Department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University where he teaches modern Chinese and Japanese history, environmental and disaster history, and on global alcohol and drug history and policy. He completed his PhD in Chinese and Japanese history at the University of British Columbia in 2008. His interdisciplinary and history research examines late imperial and modern Chinese and Tibetan environmental history, resource development and ethnic relations in western China, disaster history in East Asia, and environmental policy development in China and East Asia.

Jack has published a number of articles on China’s environmental and policy history, ranging from recent research on fire ecosystems and policy, wetlands and warfare in Chinese history, and natural and human induced disasters in modern history. His book A Change in Worlds on the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands (Lanham, MA: Lexington, 2013) is a social and environmental history of Sino-Tibetan north Sichuan. His current research delves into the historical policies and science of China’s wildfire and peri-urban fire management. He is also completing a book on natural and human-induced disasters in modern global history (Taylor & Francis). In addition to his academic activities, he has served as a consultant on a number of environment and history projects in China, Canada and the United States (most recently with the Canadian School of Public Service).

Dr. Hayes is also co-directing the China Environmental Science & Sustainability Research Group (CESS) with Dr. Timothy Cheek at UBC School of Public Policy and Global Affairs which coordinates lectures, workshops and related initiatives to connect China specialists with environmental science and sustainability experts in the wider Pacific Northwest.