Xu, Chun 徐淳 is a historian of late imperial China. He received his PhD in 2018 from Heidelberg University. Focusing on agriculture and water control, Chun studies the interplay between technology and political processes in Song, Yuan, and Ming times. His current book project, “Dragons and Commissioners,” is a study of the Ming Empire on the ground in its remotest province of Yunnan in which he explores how the study of technology in a predominantly agrarian society could reformulate perspectives on Ming China as a premodern empire. He is also working on a project that examines the epistemological and technological underpinnings of the eleventh-century reform in Song China.
Chun Xu is leader of the Working Group “Agriculture and the Making of Sciences (1100–1700).”
Current Projects
Completed Projects
Past Events
Conference
Towards a Global History of Soil: Sciences, Practices, Materialities and Mobilities, 1100-1700
MORETalk
European Discourses on the Effects of Indian Foods during the 15th to 18th Centuries: From the Fruits of Paradise to the Racialization of Nutrition
MOREEarly Career Seminar
- Institute Event
Online Public Discourse on Artificial Intelligence and Ethics in China: Context, Content, and Implications
MOREEarly Career Seminar
- Institute Event
Horses in Bohai and Jurchen Societies: Based on Osteological Studies from the South Part of the Russian Far East
MOREEarly Career Seminar
- Institute Event
Sanitary Engineers and the Growth of Colonial Cairo: A Hydraulic Approach
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