[2] Previously, she was Senior Lecturer in Chinese at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.
[7] Her most recent book is Buried Ideas: Legends of Abdication and Ideal Government in Recently Discovered Early Chinese Bamboo-slip Manuscripts (SUNY Press, 2015), which discusses four Warring States period (475-221 BCE)[8] bamboo-slip texts about Yao's abdication to Shun, centering on issues of meritocracy and hereditary succession.
[9] Allan has also collaborated extensively with Chinese scholars, Li Xueqin 李学勤 and Qi Wenxin 齐文心 in particular, in publishing Chinese materials in Western collections in order to make them available to scholars in China.
[10] Another area of collaboration is her organization of international conferences and workshops on Chinese excavated texts.
[11] For a time, Allan was Senior Lecturer in Chinese at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.