2017

POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIPS

 

Ling-Fei Lin will receive a D. Kim Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship for the 2017-2018 academic year. The title of her project is, “Industrial robots and East Asian Society, 1970s-2010s.” By focusing on the development of industrial robots in Japan, Taiwan, and China since the 1970s, she will compare and contrast how the actors expect from and thus act for industrial automation, how the result may differ from their expectation, and how robots and society co-produce each other. The study will contribute to the modern history of science and technology in East Asia by exploring the changing epistemic, social, and power relations among robots, humans, and society. She will spend her postdoctoral year at Harvard University to continue her research as well as to finish her book project.

Notice: Jung Lee, Kjell Ericson, Noemi Godefroy, and Maika Nakao were originally elected as 2017-2018 recipients of the postdoctoral fellowship but declined it since they got tenure-track positions before the fellowship started. Congratulations to all!

DISSERTATION FELLOWSHIPS

Kyuri Kim will receive a D. Kim Foundation Dissertation Fellowship for the 2017-2018 academic year. The title of her project is, “The (Un) Making of a National Disease: The Driving Forces of Tuberculosis Management Policy and Its Discourses in South Korea, from 1945 to the Present.” Her dissertation will argue that tuberculosis control was more than just a matter of disease and public health, but an effort to promote and secure the national image. She will focus on the interplay of actors—both domestic and international—in order to demonstrate that the design and motivations behind tuberculosis control have been strongly influenced by the global context. The project intends to contribute to the understanding of international health policies and politicization of diseases in postcolonial nations.

Xavier Ma will receive a D. Kim Foundation Dissertation Fellowship for the 2017-2018 academic year. The title of his project is, “Ground for Knowing: Minerals, Mining, and the Land of China (1860-1937).” His dissertation will explore the relationship between the scientific knowledge of minerals and its social and cultural implications. He will examine how research in mineralogy, geology, and mining technology in China served to project minerals into the domain of modern science, and to reconfigure the relationship between Chinese people and the land. By analyzing various materials, the dissertation will also demonstrate how this scientific knowledge was incorporated in literary works and shared within China and also globally.

TRAVELING AND RESEARCH GRANTS

Tomomi Kinukawa will receive a D. Kim Foundation research/travel grant for the 2017-2018 academic year. She will travel to Japan in the summer of 2017 to conduct oral interviews and archival research for her book, “Invisible Healers: Decolonial Labor/Life and the Politics of Care among Korean Diaspora Communities in Post WWII Japan.” She will concentrate her research on trauma, mental health and elderly care among Korean diaspora communities in Japan.

 

Kan Li will receive a D. Kim Foundation research/travel grant for the 2017-2018 academic year. She plans to visit three different archives at Taipei in the summer of 2017 for her dissertation, “From Canal City to Seaport: The Transportation System and Transformation of Tianjin, 1888-1937.” The project will analyze this monumental engineering project that brought the modern transportation system to Tianjin, the largest treaty port of North China from the late Qing to Republic Era. It also aims to provide a Chinese perspective of modernity.

 

Florin-Stefan Morar will receive a D. Kim Foundation research/travel grant in 2017. He is a PhD Candidate in History of Science at Harvard University. His research is at the intersection between history of science and global history. Using original sources in Chinese, Manchu, Italian, French, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Dutch, his dissertation discusses the translation of knowledge between East Asia and Early Modern Europe with a focus on maps. He previously completed studies in Europe, the United States and China and has a personal interest in travel and learning languages. He will travel to Rome, Italy in the Fall 2017 to conduct archival research.

 

CONFERENCE/WORKSHOP GRANTS

Heng Wen will receive a D. Kim Foundation Conference/Workshop Grant for the 2017-2018 academic year. The title of his project is, “Science for Whose Benefit?: Funding for China’s Development of Modern Science by the Rockefeller Foundation and the China Foundation in the 1920s and 1930.” By examining the actual conducts in China by the both foundations, it attempts to show how each foundation envisioned the role of science in China’s modernization process and how such visions evolved in the changing environments during the 1920s and 1930s. He will travel to Rio de Janeiro in July, 2017 to present his paper at the 25th International Congress of History of Science and Technology.

Xiaomeng Liu will receive a D. Kim Foundation Conference/Workshop Grant for the 2017-2018 academic year. The title of his project is, “The Chinese Pharmaceutical Crisis and the Reform of Chinese Drugs in Republican China.” The project examines two major reforms of Chinese pharmaceutical practices in the Republican era: one was proposed by those who were trained in the West and Japan and aimed to build a universal standard for traditional Chinese materia medica; and the other was a pragmatic approach favored by industrialists to reform the Chinese drug manufacture by imitating the Western way. He will travel to Rio de Janeiro in July, 2017 to present his paper at the 25th International Congress of History of Science and Technology.