Tristan G. Brown is a social and cultural historian of late imperial and modern China. His research focuses on the ways in which law, science, environment, and religion interacted in China from the seventeenth to early twentieth centuries. His first book, Laws of the Land: Fengshui and the State in Qing Dynasty China (forthcoming), examines the roles fengshui played in the Qing's administration, particularly its legal system. At the MPIWG, he is collaborating with the “Local Gazetteers” Working Group on fenye (correlative astrology) in Chinese local gazetteers.