Jörg Hüsemann

Jörg Henning Hüsemann is a historian of China and received his PhD from the University of Hamburg in 2012 with a dissertation on the Shuijing zhu 水經注 (Commentaries of the Water Classic). This sixth-century geographical writing was also at the center of his first monograph, Das Altertum vergegenwärtigen - Eine Studie zum Shuijing zhu des Li Daoyuan (Leipzig University Press, 2017). Since 2013, he has worked as a lecturer in Chinese culture and history at the University of Leipzig. His research and teaching focus on the history of agriculture, science, technology, and environment in China.

Jörg’s interest is the history of agriculture in imperial China, in particular the relationship between agricultural practice and its theoretical foundation as presented in farming manuals.  His current research project uses ideas about fertilizers as a lens to explore how Chinese agronomists conceptualized natural processes and understood soil, plant growth, and fertility.

He has published on agriculture, fertilizers, the Shuijing zhu, and the history of sinology at Leipzig University.

At the MPIWG, his focus is on the late Ming treatise Nongshuo 農說 by Ma Yilong 馬一龍, which has rightly been called a theoretical or philosophical manual of agriculture by Chinese agricultural historians.