Academic Staff
Dr. Dongxin ZOU
Assistant Professor
History of medicine and global health, Global Chinese medicine, Science, technology, and society, Global circuits and knowledge transfer, Vernacular knowledge and technologies, Modern China and the Third World, China-Arab connections, Oral history
- HJ608
- +852 3400 8944
- dongxin.zou@polyu.edu.hk
ORCID IDBiography
Dongxin Zou is a historian of modern China, with special interests in science, medicine, and technology in 20th century China and their relationship to the world. Her research focuses on the interplay of medicine and politics, technology and (post)colonialism, and knowledge production within transnational contexts. She received her Ph.D. in History from Columbia University in 2019. She is currently working on a book manuscript that explores Chinese medical missions to postcolonial Algeria and accompanying processes of technology transfer from the 1960s. It examines China’s health model of socialist medicine, Maoist humanitarianism, as well as the ongoing ramifications of globalization and world health politics in varied contexts across the global South. Her research has received support from the Social Science Research Council (U.S.) and American Council of Learned Societies, among others.
Prior to joining the department, Dongxin taught at Columbia and held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.Education and Academic Qualifications
- PhD: Columbia University
- MA: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- BA, MA: Beijing Foreign Studies University
Academic and Professional Experience
- Lecturer in Discipline, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University (2022.9–2023.6)
- Postdoctoral Fellow, Cluster of Science, Technology & Society, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore (2019.10–2022.8)
- Lecturer in Arabic, Department of Arabic Studies, Beijing Foreign Studies University (2006.7–2009.6)
Research Interests
Research Output
- Co-author with Liz Chee and Gregory Clancey. “Heat, Cold, and Climatic Determinism in China’s Urban Epidemics.” Urban Studies (online first 2022).
- “Economizing Socialist Aid: China’s Failed Surgical Plant in Algeria, 1973–80.” Technology and Culture 63, no.3 (July 2022): 718–48.
- “Orientalism without Power?: Chinese Female Ob-Gyns in Rural Algeria and Morocco in the Post-Mao Era.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 18:1 (March 2022): 105–133.
- “Researching PRC History in the National Archives of Algeria and Morocco.” The PRC History Review 2, no. 3 (June 2017): 24–26.
“PRC Medical Internationalism: From Cold War to Covid-19.” ARIscope. January 21, 2021.
https://ari.nus.edu.sg/ariscope/prc-medical-internationalism-from-cold-war-to-covid-19/
- Review of Guobin Yang’s “The Wuhan Lockdown.” The China Journal vol.88 (2022): 174–177.
- Review of Valentina Parisi and Kavita Sivaramakrishnan, “Historical Perspectives on Politics of Global Health and Epidemics.” IsisCB Special Issue, ed. by Stephen P. Weldon and Neeraja Sankaran. 2020. https://isiscb.org/special-issue-on-pandemics/essay.html?essayID=20
- Review of Everett Yuehong Zhang’s “The Impotence Epidemic: Men’s Medicine and Sexual Desire in Contemporary China.” China Review International 23, no.3 (2016): 318–321.
- Afaf Lutfi Al-Sayyid Marsot, A History of Egypt: From the Arab Conquest to the Present (Second Edition, Cambridge University Press, 2007). Chinese. Aiji Shi. Shanghai: Orient Publishing Center, 2018.
- Eugenia Lean, “Recipes for Men: Manufacturing Makeup and the Politics of Production in 1910s China.” Chinese. In New Critical Review [Xin Xueheng], Vol.3, edited by Zhu Qingbao and Sun Jiang, 138–156. Nanjing: Nanjing University Press, 2018.
- Co-translator of HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, My Vision: Challenges in the Race for Excellence. Translated from Arabic to Chinese. Wode gouxiang: Yingjie tiaozhan, zhuiqiu zhuoyue. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2007.
- 2022 “Skills Based Session – Archives and Sources.” The 17th Singapore Graduate Forum on Southeast Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. July 15.
- 2021 “Practicing Primary Care in Algeria: An Early History of China’s Health Engagement in North Africa.” [in Chinese]. History Department, Shanghai University, China. November 18.
- 2021 “PRC archives and documents: with a focus on conventional sources.” At “Qing and Modern China Documents and Bibliography Course,” Columbia University. November 16.
- 2020 “Failed Transfer of Appropriate Technology in the Medical Device Industry.” East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore. October 30.
- 2020 “An Early History of China’s Global Health Initiatives.” Seminar series of the History Department, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. March 12.
- 2022 “Rediscovering Postcolonial North Africa through Medical Missions.” The annual conference for the American Historical Association, New Orleans, LA, January 6–9.
- 2021 “Chinese Obstetric Care in Rural Algeria and Morocco.” The 23rd biennial conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies, Leipzig, Germany, August 24–28.
- 2021 “Heat, Cold, and Climatic Determinism in Chinese Medicine.” The conference of “Heat in Urban Asia: Past, Present, and Future,” Asia Research Institute, Singapore, April 21–23.
- 2020 “Constructing North African Reproduction: Chinese Women Ob-Gyns and their Patients in Rural Algeria and Morocco.” Workshop on Modern Overseas Chinese, Medicine, Health and Disease. Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, December 4.
- 2019 “Manufacturing Medical Supplies under a ‘China Model’.” Science and Society in Global Asia Workshop. Columbia University, NY, April 12–13.
- 2018 “The Practice and Teaching of a Localized Acupuncture in Algeria.” Medical Mobilities and Transformations in the Global Middle East panel, the annual conference for the Middle East Studies Association, San Antonio, TX, November 15–18.
- 2017 “Cooperation or Aid: China’s engagement in post-colonial Algeria.” The third Annual Workshop of Modern History: Literature and Methodology, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China, July 10–20.
- 2017 “The Practice of Acupuncture in North Africa: Localizing Chinese Cultural Heritage beyond China.” Making Intangible Cultural Heritage in China panel, the annual conference for the Association for Asian Studies, Toronto, Canada, March 19.
- 2016 “A Review of Algerian Archives and Libraries.” Annual conference for the Association for Asian Studies, Seattle, WA, April 1.
