The Science and Technology in Asia seminar series features talks on critical historical and contemporary issues in science, technology, medicine, and the environment in East, South, and Southeast Asia. It showcases some of the most exciting recent work in the humanities and social sciences that interrogates the place of the scientific and the technological in Asia and the place of Asia in our ideas and practices of science and technology.

This seminar series was founded in fall 2018 through the generous sponsorship of the Harvard University Asia Center. We now meet over Zoom roughly every other Tuesday, 10:30–11:45 am ET, during both fall and spring terms.

Fall 2024 Talks

September 10, 2024 | Alyssa Paredes | "Living Downstream of Yourself and the Mindanao River"

September 24, 2024 | Annapurna Mamidipurdi | "Three Stories and a Proposition: Innovation Theories from Handloom Weaving in India" 

October 8, 2024 | Karine Chemla | TBD 

October 15, 2024 | Amit Prasad | "Contestations over Stem Cell Ethics and the US-China Tech War: What Should We Do with Their Orientalist and Colonial Framing?" 

October 29, 2024 | Dafna Zur | "How to Talk to Martians: Socialist vs. Capitalist Science in Korean SF" 

November 12 | Fei Huang | "Bathing through Time and Landscape: A Longue Durée History of Hot Springs in China (1000–1945)" 

November 26, 2024 | Sulfikar Amir | "Living in a Hot City: Urban Heat Mitigation in Informal Settlements in Megacity Jakarta" 

December 3, 2024 | Togo Tsukahara | "Environmental History in Transnational Networks: Climate History Described by Rangaku, Dutch Navy, and Japan's Colonial Meteorology"