Yulia Frumer

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Ph.D.

Residence: September 1, 2012 - August 31, 2013

Profile

The broad area of my research is the history of East Asian science and technology, and I am particularly interested in processes of cross-cultural scientific and technological exchange that took place in eighteenth and nineteenth century Japan. More specifically, I study the ways Japanese scholars interpreted and adapted foreign devices, texts and images, and how this interaction shaped the way they observed, measured, calculated and represented natural phenomena.

My current project is a continuation and revision of my dissertation research on timepieces and time-measurement in late Tokugawa Japan. Focusing specifically on astronomical time-keeping practices and devices, I follow the transformations in timekeeping technology and the notions of time associated with it.

In addition to working on my book manuscript, I am beginning a new research project that focuses on the history of nineteenth century Japanese meteorology. Specifically, I am interested in the various conceptualizations of “cold” that stemmed from scholars’ work with meteorological measurement instruments, and the encounter with ferocious Siberian cold of Russian East.

Before coming to the Max Planck Institute for History of Science as a postdoctoral fellow, I finished my doctoral degree at Princeton and recently was appointed as an assistant professor for history of science at Johns Hopkins. In the course of my dissertation research I have spent several years in Japan, being affiliated with The International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) and later with Tokyo University. Prior to that I earned a Masters degree from the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Sciences and Ideas at Tel Aviv University.