I am a historian of East Asian international relations, focusing on experiences and frameworks that retain significance for international stability today. My current research explores historical influence campaigns to explain when and why specific political interest groups became receptive to influence from abroad. My publications revolve around the interplay of personal networks, transnational lobbying and global politics. As director of the UCD Centre for Asia-Pacific Research, I am dedicated to cultivating cooperation with Japan-based colleagues working on East Asia in the humanities, social sciences and beyond.
2025 JSPS Invitational Long-Term Fellow, Tokyo College, University of Tokyo
2025- Rising Star Fellow, UCD Institute for Discovery, University College Dublin
2024- Director, UCD Centre for Asia-Pacific Research, University College Dublin
2024 Visiting Scholar, Tokyo College, University of Tokyo
2023 Visiting Scholar, Tokyo College, University of Tokyo
2023 Visiting Scholar, Harvard University
2022-2024. Steering Committee Member, UCD Centre for Asia-Pacific Research, University College Dublin
2022-2023 Associate Member, University Seminar on Modern Japan, Columbia University
2021-2022 Member, Asia Pacific Research Network, University College Dublin
2020- Assistant Professor, History of International Affairs, School of History, University College Dublin
2020-2024 Ad Astra Fellow, School of History, University College Dublin
2017-2019 Assistant Professor, History of International Relations, Department of History and Art History, Utrecht University
2017 Visiting Researcher, Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia (Tobunken), University of Tokyo
2017 Visiting Research Fellow, Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, Waseda University
2016-2017 Affiliated Fellow, International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden
2015-2016 Postdoctoral Research Scholar, Weatherhead East Asian Institute & International Network to Expand Regional and Collaborative Teaching (INTERACT), Columbia University
2015 Postdoctoral Visiting Research Fellow, Rothermere American Institute; guest, Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford
2014-2015 Postdoctoral Fellow, International Security Studies, Yale University
2014 SIAS Consortium Fellow, National Humanities Center, North Carolina
2013-2014 Postgraduate Fellow, International Security Studies, Yale University
2013 SIAS Consortium Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute of Advanced Study)
Dissertation Fellow, Graduate Student Associates Program, 2012-2013, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
2011-2012 Research Fellow, Canada Program, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Graduate Student Associate, 2010-2012
2008-2014 Ph.D., Department of History, Harvard University
2008-2010 A.M., Department of History, Harvard University
2007-2008 Exchange Scholar, Department of History, Yale University
2004-2007 B.A. (summa cum laude), History (major), German Literature (minor), University of Konstanz
BOOKS
Opium’s Long Shadow: From Asian Revolt to Global Drug Control (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2018).
The Inside Track: Chinese-American Relations, 1870s-1970s (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, in progress)
ARTICLES, CHAPTERS
“A China Whole and Free: The Transnational Politics of Chinese Literary Diplomacy in a Wartime World,” Diplomatica, Spring 2025, forthcoming.
“From the Leak to the League: the Japanese drug trade, global public opinion and accountability, 1915-1919,” in Valeska Huber; Jürgen Osterhammel, ed., Global Publics: their power and their limits, 1870-1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020 [Studies of the German Historical Institute, London], 2020). OA: https://perspectivia.net/receive/pnet_mods_00006149
“The Politics of Locating Violence: On the Japanese Nationalist Critique of American Racism after World War I,” Journal of the British Academy 8, supplementary issue 3, June 2020 https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/publishing/journal-british-academy/8s3/
“History’s Hatred: China’s War on Drugs and the Power of Past Violence,” Epicenter (Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University), February 2019. https://epicenter.wcfia.harvard.edu/blog/historys-hatred-chinas-war-on-drugs
Spanish translation: “La guerra de China contra las drogas y el poder de la violencia del pasado,” Historia Global Online (26 March 2019). http://historiaglobalonline.com/2019/03/26/la-guerra-de-china-contra-las-drogas-y-el-poder-de-la-violencia-del-pasado-por-steffen-rimner/
“Chinese abolitionism: the Chinese Educational Mission in Connecticut, Cuba and Peru” Journal of Global History, 11, 3 (Nov. 2016)
“Macro-region Gone Missing: The Pacific Rim,” International Institute for Asian Studies, The Newsletter 75 (Autumn 2016).
“Beyond the Call of Duty: Cosmopolitan Education and the Origins of Asian-American Women’s Medicine,” in: Robert David Johnson, ed., Asia Pacific in the Age of Globalization (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
OTHER
Invited speaker at roundtable on multilateralism, reconvened 62nd session of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs (UNCND), Vienna, December 2019
“Test or Temptation? Asia, Multilateralism and the Legal Order of 1919” 6th annual 2019 Bertha von Suttner Masterclass, supported by the Bertha von Suttner Project and the Peace Palace Library, The Hague, July 2019
