In 2001, he earned a BA degree in history at Carleton College. In 2007, he earned his M.A. degree in East Asian Regional Studies at Harvard University. In March 2014, he received his Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University.
Academic position
Since August 2015 he has taught Asian History at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service in Doha, Qatar.
Fields of research
Max Oidtmann works with historical materials in Chinese, Tibetan, Uyghur, Manchu and Japanese languages. He is currently working on two book projects. The first – Forging the Golden Urn: Qing Empire and the Politics of Reincarnation in Tibet, 1792-1911 – is a political history of reincarnation in China and Tibet from the late 1700s through the present. The second – Between Patron and Priest: Qing Legal Culture and the Creation of A "Tibetan World" in Amdo, 1720-1912 – is a study of the legal culture of Tibet during the Qing dynasty.
Prizes and awards
In 2007 he was awarded the Joseph Fletcher Memorial Prize for excellence in writing an AM thesis by the Committee on Regional States East Asia at Harvard University. In 2012 he was the recipient of the Award for Best Graduate Student Paper given by the Central Eurasian Studies Society for his article To Be ‘One’s Own Master’: The 19th Century Conflict between Qing Colonial Officials and the Monastic Domain of the Cagan Nomun Han Kūtuku.
Editorship
Since March 2015 he has been Secretary of the Manchu Studies Society.
, A Study of Qing Dynasty "Xiejia" Rest Houses in Xunhua Subprefecture, Gansu, in , Marie-Paule Hille, Bianca Horlemann, Paul K. Nietupski, eds., Lexington Books, 2015, 354 p., pp. 21–46
, in Greater Tibet. An Examination of Borders, Ethnic Boundaries, and Cultural Areas, P. Christiaan Klieger ed., Rowman & Littlefield, 2015, 178 p., pp. 111–148
; Books
Forging the Golden Urn: The Qing Empire and the Politics of Reincarnation in Tibet, Columbia University Press, 2018, 352 p.
; Conferences and seminars
Qing Post-Pacification Reconstruction: Community Relations in the Sino-Tibetan-Muslim Borderlands, 1820-1880, paper presented at the International Association for Tibetan Studies Conference, University of British Columbia, August 2010.
The Nineteenth-Century Crisis of the Mongol Banners in Amdo, paper presented at the American Council for Mongolian Studies Conference, Ulanbaatar, June 2011.
The Warring States: Tibetan Buddhists and the Colonial Encounter in Late Qing Amdo, Central Eurasian Studies Society Annual Convention, October 2012
Shamanic Imperialism: The Qianlong Emperor’s Attack on Tibetan Divination Technologies and the Origins of the Golden Urn, paper presented at the American Association of Religion Annual Meeting, November 19, 2012
Muslim Mediators, Tibetan Conflicts: Chinese Muslims and Colonial Legal Culture in Early Modern China, Invited talk, New York University Abu Dhabi, November 18, 2014
The "Warring States" of Amdo: Qing Jurispractice and the Creation of the "Tibetan World", 1772-1911, paper presented at the annual conference of the Association for Asian Studies in Chicago on March 26 and 27, 2015
Kökenuur/Qinghai in the 1780s-1820s: A Tripartite Legal Order and the Lay of the Land, paper presented at the May 10, 2016 Inner Asia Law and Society Workshop on "Land Control and Land Use in Historical Perspective"
of Between Patron and Priest: Amdo Tibet Under Qing Rule, In Dissertation Reviews
In an interview published on the China Study Journal website, American tibetologist Robert Barnett claims that "we know vastly more about Tibetan areas during the Qing and Republican periods because of work by Hsiao Ting Lin, Max Oidtmann, Bill Coleman, Scott Relyea and other China scholars."
