Michael Stanley-Baker

Assistant Professor (History)

Biography:

I am an interdisciplinary medical humanities scholar interested in the relationship between Chinese medicine and religions, both in early imperial China and in the modern period, within China and abroad. I have a PhD in History of Medicine from University College London, as well as a clinical degree in Chinese medicine, and teach history and medical humanities at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. I am interested in the ways that cultural categories such as religion and medicine organize healthcare and self-cultivation practices, and how such interrelate in various contexts in different ways at different times across history, both by practitioners and actors, as well as by scholars who study them. I approach these questions using methodologies from history, anthropology, Sinology, Science and Technology Studies, and Digital Humanities. I am also very interested in the role that critical scholarship can play in the modern understanding of these practices, and in furthering communication between the biomedical sciences and modern practitioners of Chinese medicine.