Hans van de Ven

Johan 'Hans' van de Ven (born 10 January 1958 in Velsen, Netherlands) is a Dutch historian, sinologist, and an authority on the history of 19th and 20th century China. He holds several positions at the University of Cambridge, where he is Professor of Modern Chinese History, Director in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at St Catharine's College and previously served as Chair of the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.

Career Van de Ven completed undergraduate studies in sinology at Leiden University. After studying with Susan Naquin at the University of Pennsylvania, he received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Chinese history under Philip Kuhn and finished postdoctoral work as a fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.

Van de Ven is a guest professor at the History Department of Nanjing University and was an International Fellow at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, China, in 2005–06. In 2019, he was appointed as an honorary visiting professor at the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at Peking University.

Since 2022, he has been a visiting chair professor at the Department of History at Peking University.

Awards Van de Ven was awarded the Philip Lilienthal Prize of the University of California Press for best first book in Asian Studies for his book on the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1991 and the Society for Military History 2012 Book Prize for non-US work for the book The Battle for China, which he edited along with Mark Peattie and Edward Drea.

Personal life Van de Ven is married to Susan Kerr. They have three sons—Johan, Derek and Willem. His wife's father was the late Malcolm H. Kerr, political scientist and President of the American University of Beirut, who was assassinated in January 1984. She wrote a book about her family's quest for truth and justice. Van de Ven is the brother-in-law of Steve Kerr, coach of the Golden State Warriors, former Arizona Wildcats and NBA Chicago Bulls player.