He BIAN

He Bian studied History of Science at Harvard University and graduated with a PhD in 2014. She has taught at Princeton University as assistant professor in History and East Asian Studies since then. Her main research interest lies in exploring the transformation of a universal natural philosophy and cosmology in medieval Chinese thought toward the segmented, specialized and empirically oriented culture of knowledge after the seventeenth century. She is currently working on her first book, revised from her dissertation, titled Know Your Remedies: Pharmacy and Early Modern Culture in China, 1500–1800, under contract with Princeton University Press. At the MPIWG she is a visiting scholar in Department III, and will work closely with Dagmar Schäfer and Shih-pei Chen to build datasets of natural products (primarily materia medica) using the Local Gazetteer Project platform. She also plans to undertake primary research for a second book project on Qing dynasty recipe collections, and articles on the popularization of science in Qing China prior to the arrival of protestant missionaries. She enjoys learning to garden at home.