Paul Bevan is a Sinologist, historian, researcher and literary translator. From 2020 to 2023 he worked as a Departmental Lecturer in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford. Before that, from 2018 to 2020, he was Christensen Fellow in Chinese Painting at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. His research focuses equally on the visual arts and literature, and concerns the impact of Western art and literature on China during the Republican Era and the late Qing dynasty, particularly concerning periodicals and magazines. Paul's first book, A Modern Miscellany - Shanghai Cartoon Artists, Shao Xunmei's Circle and the Travels of Jack Chen, 1926-1938, Leiden: Brill, 2015, was hailed as "a major contribution to modern Chinese studies"; his second, 'Intoxicating Shanghai': Modern Art and Literature in Pictorial Magazines during Shanghai's Jazz Age was published by Brill in 2020. John A. Crespi's review calls attention to the translations imbedded in the book: "Featured within the book's densely informative analyses are translations of four modernist short stories. [These] in themselves contribute significantly to modern Chinese literary studies...". These four short stories are: "The Girl in the Inky-Green Cheongsam", and "Camel, Nietzscheanist and Woman" by Mu Shiying, "Hai Alai Scenes" by Hei Ying, and "Attempted Murder" by Liu Na'ou.
