Yijun Wang

Yijun Wang is a PhD candidate in Chinese history at Columbia University in the City of New York. She received her BA in history from Tsinghua University in Beijing in 2010 and her MA in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University in 2012.

Yijun’s research interests include material culture, history of science and technology, and gender history. Having spent her undergraduate years at Tsinghua University—“the cradle of engineer politicians”—Yijun is interested in the epistemic culture of technology and its relationship to statecraft. Her current project, titled “From Tin to Pewter: Craft and Statecraft in Qing China: 1700-1844,” looks at the epistemic culture of craft and statecraft from 1700 to 1844 by following the trajectory of tin as an ore from the mines to its fabrication as everyday tableware as the key ingredient in the alloy of pewter. Yijun has co-authored, with Kyoungjin Bae, an article titled “Kupiao and the Accounting System of the Imperial Household Workshop” in the forthcoming Making the Qing Palace Machine Work. Yijun’s dissertation research was sponsored by the International Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council from 2015–2016. In addition to her academic research, Yijun is also a practitioner of Chinese calligraphy.