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Research Project

Knowing and Doing: Text and Labor in Asian Handwork

2014 – 2016

Project Summary

Scholars from several disciplines drew on extensive data to examine the interaction of knowing and doing, text and labor, in premodern and modern Asian societies.

Research Team

Francesca Bray

Francesca Bray

Professor Emerita, School of Social and Political Science

University of Edinburgh

Francesca Bray is an anthropologist and historian of technology and gender, of agricultural systems, and of technical skills. She holds the Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. Most of her research has been on imperial China, but she uses comparative insights from China...

Jacob Eyferth

Jacob Eyferth

Associate Professor of Modern Chinese History in East Asian Languages and Civilizations, History, and the College

University of Chicago

Jacob Eyferth is a social historian of China with research interests in the life and work experience of nonelite people throughout the twentieth century. Trained at the universities of Berlin and Leiden, he has held postdoctoral fellowships at Oxford, Harvard, and Rutgers and taught at Simon...

Donald Harper

Donald Harper

Centennial Professor of Chinese Studies and Chair, East Asian Languages and Civilizations

University of Chicago

Donald Harper is a scholar of early Chinese civilization, focusing on philosophy, religion, and history of science. To learn more about his research and publications, please see his profile page at the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations.

Annapurna Mamidipudi

Annapurna Mamidipudi

Research Fellow

Institute for Asian Studies

Annapurna Mamidipudi was trained as an engineer, after which she set up an NGO that supported vulnerable craft livelihoods and worked with artisan production for nearly two decades in Andhra Pradesh, India. She has trained herself in natural dyeing techniques, and actively assisted production...

Lisa Onaga

Lisa Onaga

Senior Research Scholar, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

Lisa Onaga works on the history of science and technology in Japan, with a focus on questions about the ownership and authorship of knowledge in relation to biological materiality at the interface of invertebrate and human life in agricultural, laboratory, and industrial settings. Her...

Dagmar Schäfer

Dagmar Schäfer

Director, Department III, Artifacts, Action, Knowledge

Max Planck Institute

Dagmar Schäfer is the Director of Department III, Artifacts, Action, Knowledge at the Max Planck Institute. Her interest is the history and sociology of technology of China, focusing on the paradigms configuring the discourse on technological development, past and present. She has published...

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