EMPLOYMENT

Assistant Prof. PEKING UNIVERSITY, Beijing, China                          August 2020 - Present

           • History of Science, Technology, & Medicine Department

           • Research Fellow, Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Study

EDUCATION

Ph.D. PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, Princeton, New Jersey                    June 2020

           • Department of History

M.A. PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, Princeton, New Jersey                    May 2016

           • Examination fields:

      Modern China 1840s-present (Janet Chen)

      Imperial China 900-1850 (Benjamin Elman)

      Global History 1850s-present (Stephen Kotkin)

M.Phil. UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, Oxford, United Kingdom           July 2014

           • Master of Philosophy in Modern Chinese Studies (with Distinction)

A.B. DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, Hanover, New Hampshire                 June 2010

           • Bachelor of Arts in Chinese Studies and Government (Double Major)

PUBLICATIONS & RESEARCH 

   BOOK PROJECTS

Seeking News, Making China: Information, Technology, and the Emergence of Mass Society. (Stanford UP, March 2024; Chinese translation under contract with 广西师范大学出版社, expected 2026)

What is it like to live through a news revolution? What is the relationship between technological and political development? How can we theorize these interrelated phenomena? Tackling large questions through an analysis of the everyday experience of news in social and material context, the book traces changes in the ‘newsscape’ over the twentieth century, revealing a complex technopolitical process outside of established developmental narratives.

Overland to India: Science and Exploration in China’s Great Game 1842-1885. (research complete, currently writing-up)

A global history of science, exploration, and empire centered on a late-Qing mathematician-scientist who led an 1878 overland expedition to India (the first in 1,000 years), this project examines how people mobilized forms of information to construct geopolitical power. A three-year grant from Peking University under the title China and the Global Struggle for Science in the 19th Century has supported the research and initial writing of this manuscript.

Computational Divergence: Information Technology in China’s Nineteenth-Century Struggle (aim to complete research in 2025)

The quantity and quality of mathematical, natural historical, and administrative information in China and Europe diverged in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. I argue that the processes of reproduction—particularly print technology—drove this divergent evolution. While we can always find individual examples of natural historical empiricism, geopolitical curiosity, and advanced mathematical research in China, measurable differences in the organization, density, volume, and mobility of information had profound economic and political consequences.

The Spirit of Science: The Global History of a Concept Shaping Modern China (research stage)

The spirit of science is an objective, ahistorical, and apolitical force, a source of redemption for the nation. This spirit drives political, technological, and economic development; only its absence can hold the country back. Such is the message of a vast body of Chinese propaganda. Where did this idea come from? How did a Hegelian and Positivist philosophy from the nineteenth century come to dominate the twenty-first? What are its implications?

   PUBLICATIONS (Accepted & Under Review)

“Notes from Enlightenment Studio: The Circulation of Scientific Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century China,”resubmitted to Late Imperial China in January 2025.

“Neither Nation nor Empire: Situating Shanghai Radio in the Global Technological Moment, 1922-1925.” Technology and Culture. (October 2022)

“Ernest George Hayward Osborn (1891-1957): Radio Pioneer in East Asia.” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK. (2018)

“Reply to Emily Mokros’s Review of Seeking News, Making China.” PRC History Review. (forthcoming)

Book Review, “Uluğ Kuzuoğlu, Scripts of Modernity: Chinese Scripts in the Global Information Age (Columbia University Press, 2024)” Technology & Culture. (October 2024)

   PUBLICATIONS (In process)

“Bells for Governance, Drums for Defense: Sounds of Peace and War in Late Imperial Jiangxi”

“Brush Counting: the Multiple Practices of Computation in Late Imperial China”

“The Availability of Scientific Books in 1860s China: the Evidence of Two Sources”

“Telephone Numbers & Telephone Books: the Management of Identity and Information in the Reform Period”

“Absence of Mathematical Tables in Late Qing China: Material Causes and Geopolitical Consequences”

   CONFERENCE PAPERS & PRESENTATIONS

Book Talks: Seeking News, Making China: Reimagining Chinese History through Information Technology.

  ·Yenching Academy, Peking University. May 2024.

  ·Cambridge University, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. November 2023.

  ·Tsinghua University, History of Science Department, October 2024.

  ·Fudan University, National Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies, November 2024.

  ·Association for Asian Studies, annual conference, March 2025

  ·Invited talks in the 2025-2026 academic year at Princeton, Harvard, Cornell, Manchester, UCSD, UMass

“Information Technology, Information Crisis, and the Fate of Nineteenth Century China” in ‘Involution and Revolution: Information in Nineteenth Century China’, self-organized and hosted international conference, Peking University History of Science Department, June 2025.

“Bells for Governance, Drums for Defense: Sounds of Peace and War in Late Imperial Jiangxi” Sonic Histories of East Asia. Ca Foscari, University of Venice, May 2025.

“News in the Formation of Politics: Beyond the Propaganda Model” at Remapping the History of Political Thought Conference. University of Macau. August 2024.

“A Study on the Movement and Meaning of Science in Nineteenth Century China” Needham Research Institute, New Research Colloquium. November 2023.

“Speaking the Same Language: Problems of Communication in the History of Science” Beijing Forum, Peking University, Beijing, China. November 2023.

“Never Still: Acts of Transportation, Translation, Replication, and Definition in Nineteenth-Century Chinese Science”Colloquium, History of Science, Tech. & Medicine Department, Peking University. September 2023.

“Astronomy, Mathematics, and Exploration in China’s Great Game 1866-1879.” Goethe University, Frankfurt. As part of selforganized panel ‘Science and the Late Qing Polycrisis: Perspectives from the Interior and Non-elite 1866-1930’at the 16th International Conference on the History of Science in East Asia. August 2023.

“The Technopolitics of Social Collapse, 1966-1968” Sound Studies Working Group. Online. October 2022.

“Radio, Cultural Revolution, and the Meaning of Technology in Twentieth Century China.” History Colloquium, University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. November 2021

“The Newsscape of 1919.” Sound Studies Working Group. Online. August 2021.

“Key Questions and Debates in the History of Science in China.” Yenching Academy, Peking University, Beijing. April 2021.

“The Intermedial Experience of News in Twentieth-Century China.” Association for Asian Studies (AAS) annual conference panel ‘Remaking the History of News in East Asia.’ Organizer and Chair. March 2021.

“Red Women on the Radio: the Communist Newsscape in China 1937-1949” Modern East Asian History Workshop, Princeton University. December 2020.

“Reading the Radio: the Intermediality of Information Practices in Twentieth-Century China.” International Conference on the Practices of Reading in the People’s Republic of China. University of Freiburg, Germany. December 2020.

“Radio Technology in China’s Media History.” Department of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine. Peking University, Beijing. January 2020.

“Socialized Media: Communication Technology, News, and Information Flow in the Making of New China 1949-1958.” History of Science Program Seminar. Princeton University. February 2020.

“China’s Information Revolution: Radio Broadcasting and Society in the Nanjing Decade 1927-1937.” University Lecture on Science and the Humanities: Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing. June, 2018.

“China’s Response to the Washington Conference” Columbia Graduate Students Conference on East Asia. February 2014

 DOCTORAL DISSERTATION

“Reunified through Radio: Media, Technology, and Politics in Modern China 1923-1958.” Unpublished Dissertation. Princeton University, May 2020.

 MASTERS DISSERTATION

“The Citizen’s Diplomacy Movement: Civil Society in Response to the Washington Naval Conference of 1921-1922.” Unpublished Dissertation: Oxford University, 2014.

TEACHING & SERVICE

   PEKING UNIVERSITY: Instructor of Record

The History and Philosophy of Science (graduate seminar) 2021-present

The History of Chinese Science, Technology, and Medicine in the Western Tradition (graduate seminar) 2021-present

Historical Research Methods (graduate seminar) 2020-present

Communications as Material, Theory, and Practice (graduate seminar) 2023-present

Computational Divergence: Mathematics, Information Technology, and the Fate of China (research seminar) 2025-present

   PRINCETON UNIVERSITY: Preceptor-Assistantship in Instruction

East Asia Since 1800: with Sheldon Garon & He Bian (one section) Spring 2019

Modern China, 1850 to the Present: with Janet Chen (two sections)  Fall 2018

   SERVICE

Graduate Admissions Committee; Academic Standards Committee; Departmental Hiring Committee 2020-present

Director of Graduate Studies 2024-2025

   ADVISING

Primary advisor to four PhD candidates studying the Sichuan print industry 1850-1960, the ramie cloth industry 1880-present, hydraulic and riverine management in North China post-1949, and Hui Muslim natural history in Beijing 1850-1960.

Primary advisor to six MA students studying varied topics including twentieth-century pseudoscientific spiritualism, backyard furnaces under Maoism, the trans-pacific emergence of economics as a ‘scientific’ discipline, and the multifunctionality of telephone lines in the PRC.

MAJOR FELLOWSHIPS & AWARDS

FALL 2023 RESEARCH ASSOCIATE, CLARE HALL, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, Cambridge, UK

FALL 2023 LI FAMILY FELLOW, NEEDHAM RESEARCH INSTITUTE, Cambridge, UK

2021-2023 PKU ACADEMIC RESEARCH PROJECT GRANT, Beijing, China

2017-2018 FULBRIGHT RESEARCH FELLOW, Beijing, China

2017-2018 CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE, VISITING SCHOLAR, Beijing, China

2016-2017 BLAKEMORE-FREEMAN FELLOW, Taipei, Republic of China

2014-2016 UNIVERSITY FELLOWSHIP, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey

MEDIA & OUTREACH

Barbarians at the Gate Podcast, featured interview, March 2024.

Princeton University Press in China, “Technology and the Methods of History” (in Chinese). WeChat media article. March 2024.

Politecnico di Torino, Biennale Tecnologia, “The Past and Future of Chinese Technology,” featured interview, November 2022.

Yenching Academy, interview “Questions on the History of Science” WeChat media. April 2021.

BBC World Service The Documentary Podcast, “The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: National International,” featured interview. September, 2018.

LANGUAGES

• Mandarin Chinese: professionally fluent with research-level reading skills

• Classical Chinese: reading ability

• Modern Japanese: reading ability

• French: reading ability

• Latin: reading ability