Doctoral research fellow Ruihao Zhang

Ruihao Zhang works on early modern and modern East Asian history, with particular interests in the history of science, technology, and medicine (STM), intellectual history, and Sino-Japanese relations.

His doctoral research project, Bodies Occupied: Living the Occupation in Central China, 1937–1945 and Beyond, focuses on contested perceptions of social change as experienced through bodily and sensory life in occupied Central China during World War II. His project draws on primary sources in multiple languages and is set against the backdrop of the region’s shifting social order, from the societal collapse at the outbreak of war in 1937, through gradual reestablishment and stabilization under occupation, to the final disruption following Japan’s surrender in 1945. In doing so, he seeks to reconstruct the complex and ambivalent experiences of everyday life under Japanese occupation and Chinese collaborationist regimes in wartime China.

Prior to joining the RTG “Ambivalent Enmity,” Zhang completed a joint B.A. program in East Asian Studies through the CAMPUS Asia initiative, studying at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (China), Ritsumeikan University (Japan), and Dongseo University (South Korea). He then conducted historical research on the transcultural dimensions of Chinese medicine during its modern transformation while pursuing M.A. degrees in Transcultural Studies at Heidelberg University and, funded by the Cluster of Excellence “Understanding Written Artefacts,” in Manuscript Cultures at Hamburg University.