Needham Research Institute

Jenny Zhao completed her BA, MPhil and PhD degrees in Classics at the University of Cambridge. She works in the area of Sino-Hellenic studies, taking a comparative perspective on the philosophical traditions of ancient Greece and early China. Her main interests lie in the fundamentals of what makes us human, including topics such as moral education and the good life, and more recently representations of infancy and childhood in philosophical texts. She is currently preparing her book manuscript Aristotle and Xunzi on Shame, Moral Education and the Good Life for publication (under contract with Oxford University Press).

LLOYD-DAN DAVID RESEARCH FELLOW

Arthur Harris (October 2021 – 2024)

ah954@cam.ac.uk

Arthur Harris completed his BA in Classics at Oxford. He came to Cambridge for postgraduate studies at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, where he completed his MPhil and PhD, a study of the pseudo-Aristotelian Mechanica. His current project takes a comparative approach to medicine in ancient Greece and China.

RESEARCH ASSOCIATES

Sally K. Church 程思麗 2017-present

skc1000[put the "at" sign here]cam.ac.uk

Sally Church has a BA in Chinese history from Middlebury College (Vermont). Her MA from the University of Chicago and PhD from Harvard were both in Chinese literature. She is an Affiliated Researcher in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, a Research Associate in the Centre of Development Studies and an Emeritus Fellow at Wolfson College, in addition to her NRI affiliation. Her academic work focuses on various aspects of pre-modern Chinese history and the Silk Road, including the maritime expeditions of Zheng He (1405-1433), the overland expeditions of Chen Cheng (1413-1420), and the travels of Faxian to India (399-414). She was co-author of the Oxford Starter Chinese Dictionary, published in 2000. She is also Director of the UK educational charity Civilizations in Contact (Reg. No. 1148995, www.cic.ames.cam.ac.uk). Sally is currently working with the Librarian and Archivist on a 3 year Wellcome Funded project (2019-2022).

Wang Xiao 王晓 2019-2021

wanghugh1970@yahoo.com

WANG Xiao had a long career working for the Elephant Press 大象出版社 in Zhengzhou. He obtained his PhD from Shanghai Jiao Tong University with the thesis A Study on the Revolutions of Publishing Technology in China since the beginning of the 19th century: the Industry Revolution and the Information Revolution, 1807-2010, subsequently published as a book. His recent research has focussed on the publishing history of Needham's Science and Civilization in China (SCC), based on the archives held at the NRI. Now he is working on utilising new Artificial Intelligent text-analysing technology to compile a general English-Chinese index for SCC, in order to facilitate the work of other scholars and translators.

Wu Huiyi 吴蕙仪 2021-

huiyi.wu@cnrs.fr

Wu Huiyi received professional training as a translator and completed her PhD in history in 2013 under joint supervision between Université Paris Diderot and Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane (Florence). She was ISF fellow at the Needham Research Institute from 2013 to 2020, before taking up the position of chargée de recherche at the French Centre National des Recherche Scientifiques (CNRS) in 2021. In her first book, Traduire la Chine au XVIIIe siècle (Editions Honoré Champion, Paris, 2017), she examined French Jesuits' translations of Chinese texts and the formation of European knowledge of China during the early 18th century. She works on knowledge circulation between China and Europe between 16th and 18th century, with a particular focus on the Francophone word, and on the materiality and spatiality of knowledge. http://koyre.ehess.fr/index.php?3403

Bill M. Mak 麥文彪 2021-

bm574[put the "at" sign here]cam.ac.uk

Bill Mak completed his BA in linguistics at McGill University and received his Ph.D. in Indian literature and Buddhist philology from Peking University. He held a number of research and teaching positions in Germany, Hong Kong, and Japan before his former appointment as Associate Professor at Kyoto University, with a focus on research in the history of astronomy and astral science in China and India. He is currently Principal Researcher at the Tsz Shan Monastery Buddhist Art Museum and Honorary Research Fellow at the Jao Tsung-I Petite Ecole, University of Hong Kong. While in Cambridge, he is affiliated with the Needham Research Institute and Robinson College, Cambridge University, with the aim to complete his book Foreign Astral Science in China: From Six Dynasties to Northern Song as part of the NRI Monograph Series. His publications may be found here.

JING BRAND FELLOWS

Liu Dun 刘钝 March-August 2024

liudun@ustc.edu.cn

(Chinese Academy of Sciences)

Liu Dun is a retired professor in the Institute for the History of Natural Science (IHNS) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Among various academic positions he has held, both internationally and domestically, he used to be the Director of the IHNS (1997-2005) and Trustee of the NRI (2009-2023). His research interests include ancient Chinese mathematics, Sino-western scientific exchanges, science, technology and society, science and art, etc. His main plan as a Jing Brand Scholar during this visit is to finish writing a book about Joseph Needham and J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964), focusing on their correspondence dealing with the historiography of science in non-Western civilizations.

HO PENG YOKE FELLOWS

Yang Shujia 杨舒佳 Jan-May 2024

384662636@qq.com

(Palace Museum, Beijing)

Yang Shujia obtained her degrees in Medicine (Chinese Historical Literature) from Beijing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Palace Museum. Her current research is mainly on Qing Dynasty court medical archives, literature and cultural artifacts. During her time at the NRI she will research the circulation and application of Chinese Dendrobium in Europe from the 17th to 19th century, through the investigation of museum collections combined with relevant literature.

Wang Shengyu 王胜宇 Jan-July 2024

shengyu@uchicago.edu

Wang Shengyu holds a PhD degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Chicago. His research focuses on the tradition of recording the anomalous in late medieval and early modern China. His research is published or forthcoming in Comparative Literature, T’oung Pao, Folklore, and Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies. His project at the NRI focuses on diagrams of aeromancy in The Classic of White Gibbon, a late imperial mantic text steeped in the Chinese tradition of military divination.

LI FOUNDATION OF NEW YORK FELLOWS

Guo Jianbo 郭建波 October 2023-April 2024

834682583@qq.com

(Sichuan University)

Guo Jianbo currently holds a position at the Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology. He obtained his undergraduate degree from Northwest University and is currently pursuing a doctoral degree at Sichuan University, focusing on the protection and archaeological research of Sanxingdui bronze artifacts and silk technology. His research primarily concerns bronze casting techniques and cultural exchanges during the pre-Qin period in the Sichuan Basin.

Dong Junqing 董俊卿 Nov. 2023-April 2024
djqing@siom.ac.cn

(Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences)

Junqing Dong is an Associate Professor and a Master's Supervisor of the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on the scientific and technological archaeology of glass, ceramic and jade relics, the history of science and technology and Sino-foreign exchanges on the Silk Road.

Liang Yue 梁玥 Jan-March 2024

yliang51@binghamton.edu

(State University of New York – Binghamton)

Yue Liang is a Ph.D candidate at the State University of New York - Binghamton. Her research interests include Modern East Asia, environmental history, and the history of Science, Technology, and Medicine. Her dissertation takes a localized perspective to explore various scientific and technological strategies developed by local communities to cope with the 1954 Yangzi River flood. This disastrous event also serves as a unique lens through which to examine Cold War geopolitics in the 1950s-60s.

He Yahui 贺娅辉 Jan–July 2024

yahuihe@stanford.edu

(Stanford University)

Yahui He is a PhD candidate in Chinese Archaeology from the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Stanford University. Her research focuses on human-plant relationships, food and drink practices, and socio-political transitions in Neolithic and early Bronze Age China. During her stay at the NRI, she will work on her dissertation that focuses on long-term plant food and drink practices in the north borderland region of China (northern Shaanxi and south-central Inner Mongolia) during the Neolithic period by employing microbotanical and usewear approaches.

SOON-YOUNG KIM FELLOW

Yu Jia 余佳 Sept. 2023-2024

yujiajia2017@gmail.com

Jia Yu is the Soon-Young Kim postdoctoral research fellow for 2023/2024. She studies the history of science, technology, and medicine of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, specializing in the history of science in modern China, translations of popular science, science in print, and scientific material culture. She recently graduated with a PhD from the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Her doctoral research traces the longue durée history of the concept of bowu, an ancient and long-lived category of scholarship in China, and investigates how new interpretations and practices became associated through the studies of bowu in the 19th and 20th centuries. At the NRI, she will work on a book manuscript based on her doctoral research, and a working paper on the NRI's Stanley Gerr card dictionary.

XINGZHI SILK ROAD FELLOW

Shi Zhilin 史志林 Feb.- July 2024

shizl@lzu.edu.cn

(Institute of Dunhuang Studies, Lanzhou University)

Shi Zhilin is an Associate Professor at Lanzhou University, China. He has a Ph.D. in history and a postdoc in geography. His research interests focus on the historical geography and environmental archaeology of Northwest China, especially in the Dunhuang area. His current research topics are: Influencing factors in shifts of plant utilization strategies in the Western Hexi Corridor during Han-Tang Dynasties, and Factors influencing the flourishing and decline of the southern part of the middle section of the Silk Road.

SINO-BRITISH FELLOWSHIP TRUST FELLOW

Liu Peifeng 刘培峰 March-September 2024
1015736022@qq.com

(Jingdezhen Ceramic University)

Liu Peifeng is an Associate Professor at Jingdezhen Ceramic University, China. His research mainly focuses on ancient Chinese steel technology, especially ancient non-blast furnace ironmaking technology. His current research topics include Dr. Joseph Needham’s contributions to academic studies of the Chinese iron and steel industry.

OTHER VISITING SCHOLARS

Zhou Chang 周畅 September 2023-September 2024
maytheday@163.com
(School of Science, Xi’an University of Posts & Telecommunications)

Zhou Chang received her Ph.D. in History of Science and Technology from Northwest University. She is currently an associate professor at Xi’an University of Posts & Telecommunications. Her research interests include the history of traditional mathematics in Japan before the Meiji Restoration, the history of the development of algebraic equations in the 18th century, and the development of the theory of functions of complex variables and its dissemination in China, as well as its impact on the development of science and technology in modern China.

Hu Haohua 胡昊华 Oct 2023 - Apr 2024

huhh@caa.edu.cn

(School of Art Management and Education, China Academy of Art)

Hu Haohua is an art historian specializing in Chinese art and collecting in the twelfth to sixteen centuries. She received her PhD from the China Academy of Art with the thesis Reconstructing the Essential Criteria of Antiquities: hierarchy, taste and identity in 12^th-15^th century China. She is currently an associate professor in School of Art Management and Education, China Academy of Art. Her academic work focuses on various aspects of ancient Chinese art history from Ming dynasty literati collecting to Chinese ancient texts and prints. Her current project takes a comparative approach to natural history illustrations in both ancient China and Europe.

Liu Jie 刘杰 Nov. 2023 - Nov. 2024

liujie_77@hotmail.com

Liu Jie holds a professorship at the Research Centre for Philosophy of Science and Technology at Shanxi University. Her primary research focus lies in the philosophy of mathematics, with a particular emphasis on mathematical structuralism. Currently, she is engaged in a project centered on structural accounts of mathematical explanation, aiming to elucidate the connection between mathematics and the natural sciences.

Oh Chaekun 오재근 吳在根 Jan 2024 - Jan 2025

rootoh5@gmail.com

(Daejon University, S. Korea)

Oh Chaekun is Associate Professor at the College of Korean Medicine at Daejon University, South Korea. His research interests focus on the history of Korea, Japan and Chinese medicine, especially the medical classics, herbs, and acupuncture of the traditional era.

PHD STUDENTS

Chen Zhiyu 陈芷郁 Oct. 2023-

zc305@cam.ac.uk

Zhiyu Chen is a PhD student in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science. Her project, funded by Gates Cambridge, investigates the entanglement of geographical knowledge in the South China Sea between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. She is generally interested in the history of science and medicine from a cross-cultural perspective, focusing on processes such as translations and the transmission of visual and material culture.

Angela V. Gui 桂安安

vag27@cam.ac.uk

(Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge)

Angela Gui is a PhD student funded by Gates Cambridge, researching transnational exchanges of medical knowledge between China and Europe in the mid- to late twentieth century. Her thesis focuses particularly on how medical images communicated ideas of China as a nation, and how these images were received across different political contexts. Prior to coming to Cambridge, Angela was at the Centre for the History of Medicine at the University of Warwick, working on public health, neuroscience and Socialism in mid-twentieth century Sweden with the support of a Wellcome Trust Medical Humanities MA Award.