Academic Staff
Dr. ZHANG Yun
Assistant Professor
History of Health and Medicine in China; Science and Technology Studies; Gender Studies; Reproduction and Gender; Feminine Hygiene
- HJ603
- +852 3400 8948
- yun-sophie.zhang@polyu.edu.hk
ORCID IDResearch Overview
Dr Zhang’s research interests mainly lie in the history of health and medicine in modern China, science and technology studies, as well as gender studies. Her current research project focuses on the knowledge production and circulation of women’s reproductive health and technologies in China’s global twentieth century.
Dr Zhang has published articles and translations on Chinese women’s history, women’s print culture, as well as medicine and gender. Her first monograph Engendering the Woman Question: Men, Women, and Writing in China’s Early Periodical Press was published by Brill in 2020.
Education and Academic Qualifications
- 2015 Ph.D., Modern China Studies, The University of Hong Kong
- 2010 M.A., Comparative Literature, Peking University
- 2007 B.A., Journalism, Northwest University, Xi’an, China
Academic and Professional Experience
- 02/2021-07/2021 Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute of Sinology, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany
- 02/2019-01/2021 Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Humanities, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
- 2018 Lecturer, China Studies Program, The University of Hong Kong
- 2015-17 Lecturer and Program Coordinator, School of Humanities and Social Science, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
- 2012-2014 Visiting Fellow, Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University
Research Interests
Research Output
- Engendering the Woman Question: Men, Women, and Writing in China’s Early Periodical Press. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2020.
- “Feminism in the Vernacular: Baihua Writing, Gender, and Identity in Late Qing China,” Twentieth-Century China 45, no. 1 (January 2020): 85–104.
- “Nationalism and Beyond: Writings on Nüjie and the Emergence of a New Gendered Collective Identity in Modern China,” Nan Nü: Men, Women and Gender in China 17, no. 2 (2015): 245–275.
- “The Emerging Modern Woman: Representations of the ‘Girl Student’ in Early Twentieth-Century Urban China,” special issue of “Representations of Gender and Sexuality in Asia,” Harvard Asia Quarterly 16, no. 3 (2014): 50–59.
- “The Mixed-Gender Public Space in Early Chinese Women’s Periodical Press,” The Paper (Review & Response, July 2021), https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_13561482.
- 賀蕭：《記憶的性別：農村婦女和中國集體化歷史》, Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2017. Translated from Gail Hershatter, The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China’s Collective History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013).
- 2022 Co-PI, Sin Wai Kin Foundation Limited Donation and RGC Research Matching Grant Scheme, awarded for a five-year project entitled “Ecological Crises, Technological Changes, and Chinese Culture (14th–21st Century)”.
- 2022 PI, General Research Fund, Research Grants Council, H.K.S.A.R., awarded for a three-year project entitled “The Vernacular Science of Feminine Hygiene: Women’s Reproductive Health in China’s Global Twentieth Century, 1920s–1950s”
- 2022 PI, University’s Start-up Fund for RAPs under the Strategic Hiring Scheme, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
- 2020 Harvard Yenching Institute Alumni Publication Grant
- 2019-2021 CLASS Postdoctoral Fellowship, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
- 2017 Harvard Yenching Institute Travel Grant for the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference
- 2012-2014 Harvard Yenching Institute Visiting Fellow Scholarship
- 2013 Harvard Yenching Institute Dissertation Completion Grant
- “Feminism in the Vernacular: Baihua Writing, Gender, and Identity in Modern China.” Annual Conference for Association for Asian Studies, Toronto, Canada, March 16–19, 2017.
- “Importing Hygienic Womanhood: Feminine Hygiene Products and the Modern Woman Image in 1920s and 1930s Urban China.” The AAS-in-Asia Conference, Seoul, South Korea, June 24–27, 2017.
- “New Women as Domestic Guardians: Hu Binxia’s Visions of Modern Womanhood in 1910s China.” The Ninth Annual Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Hong Kong, The University of Hong Kong, March 14–15, 2014.
- “Conceiving an Emerging Nüjie: Nationhood and Gendered Identities in Late Qing Women’s Journals,” “Female Talent Repositioned: Women Writers in China’s First Women’s Journal Nüxue bao,” and “The Contemporary Ethnic Other: A Manchu Woman’s Suicide.” Harvard-Yenching Fellow Workshop Series, November 2012, March 2013, and October 2013.
- “Revisiting the Cainü (Talented Women) Tradition in Early Modern China: Female contributors in Nüxue bao.” The 2011 Sixth Annual Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Hong Kong, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, May 5–6, 2011.
- “From Father’s Representation to Daughter’s Response: The Father-Daughter Bond in Late Imperial China.” The Fourth Workshop on the Encounters of Young Scholars on Asian Studies, The University of Hong Kong, January 2011.
- “Engendering the Woman Question: Men, Women, and Writing in China’s Early Periodical Press.” Book Launch Talk, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, June 16, 2021.
- “The Lens of the Vernacular Science of Feminine Hygiene: Gender, Reproduction, and Medicine in Modern China.” Institute of Sinology Seminar Series, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, June 23, 2021.
- “Gendered Writings on Women’s Reproductive Health and Bodies in Early Republican China.” CoHASS Post-Doctoral Fellow Seminar Series, Nanyang Technological University, February 5, 2020.
- “Domesticating the Science of Hygiene: Women’s Bodies and Health in Republican China.” HKUST Public Humanities Lecture Series, Hong Kong Museum of History, September 25, 2016.
- “Creating a New Women’s World: The Women’s Press and the Emergence of a Gendered Public Identity in 1910s China.” Wednesday Gender Seminars, Gender Studies Program & Gender Research Center, CUHK, October 14, 2015.
- “The Emerging Modern Woman: Images of the ‘Girl Student’ in Early Twentieth Century Urban China.” HKUST Public Humanities Lecture Series, Hong Kong Museum of History, August 1, 2015.
Esteem Measures
Journal Editorship
- Reviewer. Journal of Asian and African Studies. February 2021.
- Reviewer. International Journal of Diasporic Chinese Studies. Spring 2020.
Engendering the Woman Question: Men, Women, and Writing in China’s Early Periodical Press. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2020.
