PhD student

College: Newnham

Supervisor: Dániel Margócsy

Advisor: Mary Augusta Brazelton

Thesis topic: The World of The Sangleys: Chinese Migration and Cross-Cultural Knowledge in Early Modern Southeast Asia

Research interests: Knowledge transmission and mobility; Visual and material culture; Marginalised knowledge actors; Disciplinary history and epistemic norms; History of science and medicine in East and Southeast Asia; Chinese-European exchanges

Email address: zc305@cam.ac.uk

Research summary

My thesis examines how Chinese migrants from Fujian and Guangdong to early modern Southeast Asia participated in cross-cultural knowledge exchange, which was shaped by the limits of translation and commensurability. The central argument is that these migrants were active epistemic agents rather than merely informants for European knowledge projects, and that their mobility was constitutive of the kinds of knowledge that was produced. I use riyong leishu ('daily-use encyclopaedias') as the primary textual source, treating this popular genre from Fujian as the closest available record of the migrants' intellectual worlds. My argument is developed over four case studies. The first, centred on the Boxer Codex produced in 1590s Manila, re-interprets a Spanish-sponsored ethnographical manuscript as a site of competing epistemologies. The second chapter examines Chinese-run sugar plantations in Dutch Batavia, tracing an extractive agricultural phenomenon from Fujian into the colonial hinterland. The third chapter takes a more expansive temporal and geographical perspective, reconstructing the technical-ritualistic assemblage of maritime efficacy in the South China sea and analysing how European observers distorted Chinese maritime religiosity to serve evangelical interests. The final example, still under investigation, tracks the circulation of birds and materia medica to examine how Southeast Asian commodities entered Chinese and subsequently European knowledge.

Education

• MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine, University of Cambridge
• MA in Natural Sciences, University of Cambridge

Publications

1. Zhi-Yu Chen, "Entangled Imaginations: The Boxer Codex, Imperial Visions, and Cross-Cultural Knowledge in the Late-Sixteenth-Century Western Pacific Rim," Early Science and Medicine 31, no. 3 (2026): 1–38.

Public engagement

1. "Practical Mathematics and Its Audience in Restoration London," exhibition at Whipple Library, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, 2023
2. "Cranioclast: An Instrument of Hope and Fear" and "For the Good of the Living: Dissection and Medical Education in the Nineteenth Century," blogposts for the Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret, 2022

Roles and affiliations

Current

• Volunteer: Whipple Museum of the History of Science
• Postgraduate Representative: Museum Committee, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge
• PhD Researcher: Needham Research Institute
• Co-Convener: History of Science and Medicine in Southeast Asia reading group 
• Co-Convener: East Asian History and Philosophy of Science, Technology, and Medicine reading group
• Supervisor: Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge

Past

• Researcher: Library and Archives Research Award, Newnham College, University of Cambridge (2026)
• Archives Assistant: Newnham College, University of Cambridge (2025)
• Conference Assistant: Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge (2025)
• Translation Editor: Queen Mary University of London (2023)
• Part II Student Representative: Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge (2021–2022)
• Archives Volunteer: Needham Research Institute (2021)
• Research & Public Engagement Volunteer: Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret (2021)

Awards

• Best Research Contribution: Newnham College Graduate Conference (2024)
• Early Science and Medicine Essay Prize: History of Science Society (2023)
• PhD Scholarship: Gates Cambridge Trust (2023–2027)
• Rausing Prize: Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge (2023)
• Holgate Pollard Memorial Prize: University of Cambridge (2022)
• Bronowski & Willmoth Prizes: Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge (2022)
• Clough & Newnham College Prizes: Newnham College, University of Cambridge (2022)

Talks and presentations

2026

• History of Science Society Annual Meeting
• Navigating Histories: The Value and Meaning of Orientation* 
• Newnham College Graduate Conference 

2025

• British Society for the History of Science Annual Meeting
• Scientific Poetics and Neo-Latin: A Roundtable* 
• Diasporic Natures*
• Integrating The Image: Visual Culture, Material Culture, and Early Modern British History 
• New Directions in the History of East Asian Science*

2024

• Newnham History Forum*
• Scientific Instrument Commission Online Seminars
• Material Culture Forum
• Cambridge Workshop for the Early Modern Period
• Newnham College Graduate Conference

2023

• The Association for Southeast Asian Studies Conference
• History of Knowledge Conference
• Postgraduate Lunchtime Seminars (University of Manchester)
• Indigenous Histories of Encounter in Asia Pacific
• Medieval and Early Modern Student Association Conference (University of California, Los Angeles)
• Needham Research Institute Seminars*