Junior Professor of Chinese Language, Literature and Culture

Academic Career
Emily Graf is Junior Professor of Chinese Language, Literature and Culture at  the University of Tübingen. She was a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institute in the area of Global History (2021-23) und at the Institute of Chinese Studies (2018-21) at the Freie Universität Berlin. As a postdoctoral associate she was part of the research project “A Translingual Conceptual History of Chinese Worlds” at the Joint Center for Advanced Studies “Worldmaking from a Global Perspective: A Dialogue with China”. She received her PhD in 2018 from Heidelberg University, analyzing the institutional histories of author museums in the PRC, the GDR and Taiwan. She conducted fieldwork in the PRC and Taiwan during a Visiting-PhD Fellowship at Renmin University of China, Beijing (2013-14). Her research interests include Chinese literature in a global context and cultural politics in the PRC and Taiwan. In her current research, she approaches the visual, conceptual and cultural histories of “barefoot doctors” and their relation to the field of global health.

• 2020-2023 Research Associate (Postdoc) in the project “A Translingual Conceptual History of Chinese Worlds“ (FU Berlin) at the Joint Center for Advanced Studies “Worldmaking from a Global Perspective: A Dialogue with China”, financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
• 2021-2023 Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin, postdoc (Postdoctoral Researcher) Friedrich-Meinecke-Institute, Research Area Global History, Freie Universität Berlin
• 2018-2021 Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin, postdoc (Postdoctoral Researcher) Institute of Chinese Studies, Freie Universität Berlin
• 2018 Assistentin, postdoc Institute of Chinese Studies, Heidelberg University / Postdoctoral Coordinatorof the DFG-funded project “Recalibrating Culture” Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies, Heidelberg University
• 2/2018 Ph.D. in Sinology (summa cum laude) “Lu Xun on Display: Memory, Space, and Media in the Making of World Literary Heritage” Heidelberg University
• 2014-18 Project Manager of “Taking China to the Schools!” Institute of Chinese Studies, Heidelberg University; supported by the Robert Bosch Foundation (2014-15) and the Confucius Institute at Heidelberg University (2016-)
• 2013-14 Visiting-Ph.D.-Fellowship and fieldwork Renmin University of China, Beijing
• 2012-18 Assistentin, praedoc Institute of Chinese Studies, Heidelberg University
• 2012 Magister Artium in Sinology / East Asian Art History/ English Literature Heidelberg University
• 2010 Research semester and fieldwork Institute of Taiwan Literature, National Taiwan University (NTU)
• 2006-07 Studies at the National Taiwan University, Taibei / Internship as Museum Guide the National Palace Museum, Taibei

Research Areas

• Global history
• 20th century China
• Barefoot Doctors
  • Medicine and the History of Knowledge in China
  • Barefoot Doctors and China’s Role in Global Health
• Lu Xun Museums
  • Chinese Literature in a Global Context
  • Museums and Cultural Politics in the PRC and Taiwan
  • Materiality, Visuality, Spatiality, and the Construction of Authenticity
  • Propaganda, Cult of Personality and Heroism in Historiography
  • The Interrelation between History, Oral History and Collective Memory