Benjamin Gallant is a scholar of early Chinese intellectual and legal history. His current book project, “Gifts of State: A Cultural History of the Emergence of the State,” examines the sociopolitical importance of gift-giving in ancient China with a particular focus on how state formation was materially and discursively linked to the gift. He is also interested in comparative history, and co-organized a workshop on China and the Greco-Roman world at Columbia University’s Tang Center for the Study of Early China in 2025. His paper, “Family Matters: The Continued Importance of Lineage in Warring States Period Chu,” was awarded a 2025 Association for Asian Studies Graduate Student Paper Prize. He received his doctorate from Harvard University’s Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations in 2025, and previously received an MA from the Department of Chinese Literature at National Taiwan University. His research has been supported by the Fulbright Program, the Gerda Henkel Foundation, and the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard.​

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Email: bgallant@hku.hk