Screenshot 2021-06-29 at 11.40.12ORCID iD iconorcid.org/0000-0001-6785-8501
Assistant Professor of History and Medical Humanities
School of Humanities & Lee Kong-Chian School of Medicine
Nanyang Technological University
14 Nanyang Drive, #05-12, Singapore 637332

新加坡南洋理工大學
人文學院，李光前醫學院
助理教授

I am an interdisciplinary medical humanities scholar interested in the relationship between Chinese medicine and religions, both in early imperial China and in the modern period, within China and abroad.

I am an assistant professor jointly appointed  in History at Nanyang Technological University, and Medical Humanities lead at Lee Kong Chian medical school in Singapore. I hold a PhD in Medical History from University College London, and a clinical degree in Chinese medicine. I’ve held research appointments at the Wellcome Centre for History of Medicine, the Needham Research Institute in Cambridge, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Academia Sinica in Taipei, and the KFG for Multiple Secularities at the University  of Leipzig. I’ve received research funding from the Wellcome Trust, Max Planck Institute, Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, Taiwan Ministry of Education, Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology, Singapore Ministry of Education, Singapore National Heritage Board, and Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS, and AHRC and Royal Historical Society in the UK.

I am interested in the broad spread of healthcare and self-cultivation practices and how these interrelate in various contexts, and how cultural categories such as religion and medicine are used to organize these practices in different ways at different times across history, both by practitioners and actors, as well as by scholars who study them.  I approach these questions using methodologies from history, anthropology, Sinology, Science and Technology Studies, and Digital Humanities. I am  interested in the role that critical scholarship can play in the modern understanding of these practices, and in furthering communication between the biomedical sciences and modern practitioners of Chinese medicine.

I am active in four primary ways:

  • publishing humanistic studies of Chinese religion and medicine in journals, books and monographs. (here)
  • developing Digital Humanities tools and online working environments where scholars can analyse and compare textual corpora at scale. (DH)
  • serving the International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine (IASTAM), including organising international conferences,  helping to run the society, and relationship-building with public health stakeholders.
  • teaching Medical History and Medical Humanities.