Xinyi Wen

Current Position

Frances A. Yates Long-Term Research Fellow in Intellectual, Cultural and Art History, Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London

PhD Research Project

The Signatures of Plants in Early Modern Science and Medicine, Wellcome Trust Doctoral Studentship 221115/Z/20Z (£174,156)

Awards

1. 2026 Förderpreis des Fachverbands Medizingeschichte by the German Association for the History of Medicine, for the best article on the history of medicine published in the past two years by an early-career scholar. 
2. 2025 Pieter van Foreest Prize (Honourable Mention) by the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health (EAHMH), for the best presentation by a PhD student at the 2025 Biennial Conference.
3. 2024 Margaret W. Rossiter History of Women in Science Prize by the History of Science Society (HSS), for the best article in the field published in the four previous years.
4. 2023 Best Article Award by the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender (SSEMWG), for the best article in the field published in the past year.

Publications

PhD Thesis 

The Signatures of Plants in Early Modern Europe, 1580-1720, University of Cambridge, 2025. 

Journal Articles

1. "When Jupiter Meets Saturn: Aby Warburg, Karl Sudhoff, and Astrological Medicine in the Age of Disenchantment,” Journal of the History of Ideas 85, no. 2 (2024): 321-355. [Open Access Version]
2. "Colouring Flowers: Books, Art, and Experiment in the Household of Margery and Henry Power,” British Journal for the History of Science 56, no. 1 (2023): 21–43, co-authored with Christoffer Basse Eriksen.
   • Adapted into a section in the Sloane Lab's digital exhibition, "In the Margins of Early Modern Science: Pioneering Women in Sloane’s ‘Paper Museum," by Rosalind White.

Book Chapters

1. “Microscopy and the Signature of Plants in Early Royal Society," in Images and Institutions: The Visual Culture of Early Modern Scientific Societies, ed. Katherine Reinhart & Matthijs Jonker, Brepols: 2026, 303-319.

Selected Magazine Essays and Blog Posts

1. “Modernity as Detour: Aby Warburg and the Kyoto School,” Mnemosyne (Warburg Institute Blog), February 2026.
   • Featured as weekly highlights of public scholarship by #ScholarSunday, alongside nine other essays in platforms including The New Yorker. 
2. “The Line of Transmission: Tracing botanical images in Frank Nicholls’s manuscript (MS/24) at the Linnean Society,” The Linnean, vol.39.2, September 2023, 46-49.
3. “The Fair Never Ends: On Collecting European Rare Books and Other Things,” Art Monthly (China), 2023.02, 27-33. 
4. "The Abyss of Recipes: Cassell’s Cyclopaedia of Mechanics and William Kentridge’s Second-Hand Reading," Doing History in Public, June 2021.

Selected Exhibitions 

1. “Outside the Map: Aby Warburg and East Asia,” Warburg Institute, London, forthcoming 17 June 2026.
2. “From Magic to Microscopes: The Doctrine of Signatures in Early Modern Science and Medicine,” Whipple Museum of the History of Science, Cambridge and Tsinghua University Science Museum, Beijing, 31 Mar-19 Apr 2022 and permanently online.

Invited Lectures since 2026

1. A History of Science in Reverse: The Doctrine of Signatures, 1885-1609, The Warburg Institute, forthcoming 17 June 2026.
2. How to Write a History of Science in Reverse: The Doctrine of Signatures, 1885-1584, Aarhus University, Centre for Science Studies, 27 May 2026.
3. Cosmos or Coitus? A Copy Census of Oswald Croll’s Basilica Chymica, 1609-1690, Oxford Seminar in the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, 13 May 2026.
4. Critique and Response: East Asia as Method for HSTM (with Hansun Hsiung), Needham Research Institute, 11 March 2026.

Selected Fellowships and Grants

• Physicians’ Collections Research Grant, Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh
• Visiting Fellowship, University of Glasgow Library
• Research Fellowship, Linda Hall Library 
• Katharine F. Pantzer Jr. Research Scholarship, Bibliographical Society
• British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies/Bodleian Libraries Fellowship