Biography
I joined the Department of History and Philosophy of Science as a D. Kim Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in October 2024. Starting May 2025, I will continue at HPS as a three-year Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow. Prior to coming to Cambridge, I worked as a Research Associate at the Centre for the Social History of Health & Healthcare, University of Strathclyde, for the Wellcome-Trust funded project ‘Building Shared Futures: Co-developing Medical Humanities in China and the UK’. I hold bachelor’s degree in History from the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil, and a master’s degree in Chinese History from Fudan University, China. My Wellcome Trust-funded PhD – awarded in October 2023 with no revisions – won the ‘2024 British Association for Chinese Studies Best Doctoral Thesis Award’ and the ‘8th Dissertation Prize of the Division of History of Science and Technology’ by the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology.
I am a global historian specialising in the intersections of science, medicine and religion in 19th- and 20th-century China, with extended interests in the histories of psychology and mental health in modern East Asia and the history of alternative medicine in South America.
My first edited volume, Therapy, Spirituality and East Asian Imaginaries, was published by Amsterdam University Press (‘Health, Medicine, and Science’ series) in February 2025. In 2024, I received a generous USD 60,000 award from the D. Kim Foundation to support the revision and publication of my first monograph. Titled The Science of the Spirit: Psychical Research, Medicine and the Occult in Chinese Modernity, it explores the Chinese enthusiasm with mental powers and their impact on notions of health and religious experience in early 20th-century China. Contrary to the expectation that the introduction of modern science and technology would create a world devoid of spiritual meaning, my book demonstrates that the mind sciences instead sparked renewed interest in spiritual, traditional and occult knowledge and practices, particularly among educated Chinese elites.
I am an Associate Fellow of The Royal Historical Society, a Fellow of The Royal Asiatic Society and a Research Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge. To find out more about my work, please visit my personal website.
Research
I am interested in global studies of science, medicine and religion, alongside the histories of health, the human sciences and psychological disciplines. My work also spans the broader field of medical humanities. Whilst my primary research centres on modern China and East Asia, I maintain a keen interest in transnational history and the history of alternative medicine in South America.
Publications
The Science of the Spirit: Psychical Research, Medicine and the Occult in Chinese Modernity. [In progress]
Therapy, Spirituality and East Asian Imaginaries (co-edited with Ioannis Gaitanidis, Avery Morrow and Han Sang-yun), Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2025.
Journals and Book Chapters
‘Disembodied Spirits or Mental Suggestion? Psychical Research and the Redefinition of Superstition in Republican China’, in Emily Baum and Albert Wu, eds., Uncanny Beliefs: Superstition in Modern Chinese History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, forthcoming).
‘Door Amulets’, in Adam Y. Chau, ed., Chinese Religious Culture in 100 Objects (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
‘From Eden to Aquarius: Oriental Medicine, Natural Healing and the Market of Self-Care Books in Brazil in the 1970s’, in Ioannis Gaitanidis, Luis F. B. Junqueira, Avery Morrow and Han Sang-yun, eds., Therapy, Spirituality, and East Asian Imaginaries, (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2025).
‘Medicine in Chinese History’, in Routledge Research Encyclopedia of Chinese Studies, edited by Chris Shei and Sui He (London: Routledge, 2024).
‘The Power Within: Mass Media, Scientific Entertainment, and the Introduction of Psychical Research into China, 1900–1920’, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 59, no. 2 (2023): 193–216. [Winner of the ‘2021 John C. Burnham Early Career Award’, conferred by the Forum for History of Human Science and the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences]
‘Plantas Medicinais e História da Saúde: Reflexões sobre duas experiências entre ensino e extensão’ (Medicinal Plants and the History of Health: Teaching and Public Engagement)’ (co-authored with Renata P. Sigolo and Adriana I. Strappazzon), in Felipe A. S. Ribeiro, ed., Ensino de História: teorias, práticas e novas abordagens (Teresina: Universidade Estadual do Piauí, 2023), 111–130.
‘Numinous Herbs: Stars, Spirits, and Medicinal Plants in Late Imperial China’, in Vivienne Lo and Michael Stanley-Baker, eds., Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine (London: Routledge, 2022), 456–472.
‘What Not to Eat, How Not to Treat: Medical Prohibitions’ (co-authored with Vivienne Lo), in Vivienne Lo and Michael Stanley-Baker, eds., Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine (London: Routledge, 2022), 303–319.
‘Entre Agulhas e Mãos: Contracultura e a popularização da medicina chinesa no brasil na década de 1970’ (Needles and Hands: Counterculture and the Popularisation of Chinese Medicine in Brazil in the 1970s)’ (co-authored with Renata P. Sigolo), Locus 27, no. 1 (2021): 122–151.
‘Revealing Secrets: Talismans, Healthcare and the Market of the Occult in Early Twentieth-Century China’, Social History of Medicine 34, no. 4 (2021): 1068–1093. [Shortlisted for the ‘40th Anniversary Prize of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine (IASTAM)’, 2020]
‘Popular Healing in Printed Medical Books: The Compilation and Publication of the Chuanya 串雅 from the Late Qing through the Republican Period’, Monumenta Serica 66, no. 2 (2018): 391–436.
