2025 Charlotte J. Conroy Dissertation Prize Finalists

Michelle Hauk, Dwelling with Water: Tokyo Waterworks and the Remaking of the Urban Home, 1890–1990 (Columbia University, East Asian Languages and Cultures, 2023)

John Kanbayashi, Hydraulic Taiwan: Colonial Conservation under Japanese Imperial and Chinese Nationalist Rule, 1895-1964 (Harvard University, History, 2023)

Eri Kitada, Intimately Intertwined: Settler and Indigenous Communities, Filipino Women, and U.S.-Japanese Imperial Formations in the Philippines, 1903–1956 (Rutgers University, History, 2023)

2025 Charlotte J. Conroy Dissertation Prize Winner

John Kanbayashi

Author of Hydraulic Taiwan: Colonial Conservation under Japanese Imperial and Chinese Nationalist Rule, 1895-1964 (Harvard University, History, 2023)

Hydraulic Taiwan offers a pioneering exploration of the environmental history of colonial and postwar Taiwan. Drawing on a rich array of Japanese- and Chinese-language archival sources, John Kanbayashi examines the central role of Taiwan's rivers in shaping the island's political, social, and ecological landscapes. The study traces how Japanese colonial authorities, and later the Chinese Nationalist regime, undertook ambitious hydraulic projects—including dam construction, irrigation systems, and flood control measures—to extend state power, promote economic development, and reshape the Indigenous-dominated highlands and Han-dominated lowlands of Taiwan. Kanbayashi's beautifully written study makes a vital contribution to the intersecting fields of Japanese imperial history, Taiwanese studies, and environmental history, offering fresh insights into the ecological legacies of state-building and empire.