Joanna Waley-Cohen

Eleanor Joanna Waley-Cohen (born 10 June 1952) is an English academic who is Silver Professor of History at New York University, where she has taught Chinese history since 1992. She served as Provost of New York University Shanghai from 2014 to 2025, the University's chief academic officer, setting the university's academic strategy and priorities, and overseeing academic appointments, research, and faculty affairs.

Her research interests include early modern Chinese history, especially the Qing dynasty; China and the West; and Chinese imperial culture, especially in the Qianlong era; warfare in China and Inner Asia; Chinese culinary history.

Early life Waley-Cohen was born in 1952 at Westminster Hospital in London, the daughter of Sir Bernard Waley-Cohen, Baronet and Hon. Joyce Nathan. She was born into a prominent Anglo-Jewish family, the granddaughter of Sir Robert Waley Cohen and Lord Nathan.

Her 2003 article "New Qing History" summarized American revisionist scholarship in history of the Qing dynasty and gave it the name New Qing History which has come into widespread use.