Dinner with Koji Hirata

Koji Hirata is a Senior Research Fellow (Senior Lecturer) in History at Monash University in Australia. He earned his Ph.D. in history at Stanford University in 2018. Before joining Monash, he was a Research Fellow (JRF) at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge. His research focuses on modern China, Japan, and Russia/Soviet Union with broader implications for the global history of capitalism and socialism. His new book Making Mao’s Steelworks: Industrial Manchuria and the Transnational Origins of Chinese Socialism (Cambridge University Press, 2024), received the 2025 Reid Prize from the Asian Studies Association of Australia. He is currently working on a new book project about Mao-era China’s foreign economic relations.