Lewis Bremner

I study the recent history of science, technology, and medicine, with a focus on East Asia.  I am particularly interested in scientific and technological innovations that emerge from unexpected or marginalised places, and in the interconnectivities that are formed by the movement of technologies, people, knowledge, ideas, and practices around localities, regions, and the world. Following a DPhil in History at the University of Oxford, I started my career as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University.  I have since held teaching posts at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Oxford, before joining the University of Cambridge in 2022.

I am completing a book manuscript on the technological history of the magic lantern, a type of image projector, in Japan and East Asia from the late-eighteenth to the late-twentieth century.  The book uncovers the systems of knowledge and practice that shaped how the instrument was made, used, and viewed over centuries, as both it and the society around it were transformed. 

My current projects include a study of the global translation of Newtonian scientific ideas, an article on the visual representation of consciousness by scientists in Japan, and an investigation into the transnational history of the irrigation pump in twentieth century East Asia.  I am also the co-editor of a forthcoming interdisciplinary volume on recent Japanese history, Reopening the Opening of Japan: Transnational Approaches to Japan and the Wider World, which uses a transnational perspective to make space for the examination and understanding of historical dynamics that have been ill-served by national and global history approaches, and comprises research on topics including medical humanitarianism, the microbial sciences, marine ecology, the development of taxonomic systems, and the manufacture of technology.

Research interests

Global history of science and technology; Transnational history; Science and technology in everyday life; Histories of pollution and environmentalism; Visual culture and the sciences; Medicine and representations of the body; Water management; Optical instruments; Knowledge production in East Asia.

Publications

‘The Magic Lantern as a Lens for Observing the Eye in Tokugawa Japan,’ Modern Asian Studies, 54 no. 3 (2020).

Reopening the Opening of Japan: Transnational Approaches to Modern Japan and the Wider World. Leiden: Brill, 2023 (co-edited with Manimporok Dotulong and Sho Konishi).

‘Introduction.’ In: Lewis Bremner, Manimporok Dotulong, Sho Konishi (eds.), Reopening the Opening of Japan: Transnational Approaches to Modern Japan and the Wider World. Leiden: Brill, 2023.

‘The Transformation of Magic Lantern Technology in Nineteenth Century Japan.’ In: Lewis Bremner, Manimporok Dotulong, Sho Konishi (eds.), Reopening the Opening of Japan: Transnational Approaches to Modern Japan and the Wider World. Leiden: Brill, 2023.