Research

My PhD thesis and current book project, Globalizing China: Jesuits, Eurasian Exchanges, and the Early Modern Sciences, examines how the collapse of the Ming dynasty in 1644 transformed the sciences in Europe. The dissertation argues that early modern European writers selectively appropriated Chinese scientific practices and knowledges as a resource with which to exercise political power at home. Read more about it here!

My postdoctoral project, Southern Africa and the Globalisation of Knowledge, turns to the itineraries undertaken by agents bringing Asian cultures of knowledge to Europe, zooming in on the key port through which almost all voyagers passed: the Cape of Good Hope. The project explores the ways in which East Asian cultures of knowledge were globalised by European agents at the Cape, and how southern Africa both transformed and was transformed by these travelling Asian knowledge traditions. Read more about it here!