Alisa Jones received her MA from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and her PhD from the University of Leeds. She specialized in the history of modern and contemporary China with secondary interests in politics and education, writing her doctoral dissertation on history education policy and praxis in the post-Mao reform-and-opening period.

Recently, Jones collaborated on book projects that address the roles played by history textbooks, historiography, and popular culture in shaping public memory and national identities across East Asia and the ways in which the past has been contested in various domestic and international arenas. She is currently working on several related projects, examining the goals and content of history and citizenship education as well as the ways in which other public and private mechanisms (such as the legal system, patriotic campaigns, the media, the internet) have been used and abused to define the parameters of acceptable debate about the past and the claims on the citizens of the present and future it represents.

While at Shorenstein APARC, she will be researching and teaching on issues of historical memory, identity, conflict and reconciliation in the Northeast Asian region.