University of Oxford
School of Anthropology & Museum Ethnography
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Professor Elisabeth Hsu

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Professor Elisabeth Hsu

Professor of Anthropology

Unit Affiliation

Institute of Social & Cultural Anthropology, School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford 

College Affiliation 

Fellow of Green Templeton College

 

Contact

Email: elisabeth.hsu@anthro.ox.ac.uk  
Telephone: +44 (0)1865 274681

Bio

Elisabeth Hsu joined the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Oxford as University Lecturer in Medical Anthropology in 2001 in order to set up its Medical Anthropology MSc and MPhil courses. She obtained Recognition of Distinction as Reader in Social Anthropology in 2006 and as Professor in Anthropology in 2010.

She co-founded the ongoing Berghahn book series on "Epistemologies of Healing" in 2005, specifically to increase the reach of doctoral-research-based monographs. She also co-established the ongoing "Anthropology Research Group at Oxford on Eastern Medicines and Religions", Argo-EMR, in 2006, for post-doctoral researchers interested in medical anthropological approaches to scholarly medical traditions. 

Interests

Elisabeth Hsu's research contributes to the fields of medical anthropology and ethnobotany; language and text critical studies; and the history of science, technology and medicine in China and beyond. It concerns Chinese medicine, and East Asian and traditional and pre-twentieth century medicines more generally; the transmission of knowledge and practice; body and personhood; treatment modalities and their efficaciousness; pulse diagnosis; touch, pain, feelings and affect, cognition and emotions, and sensory experience.  Her latest ethnography Chinese Medicine in East Africa: An Intimacy with Strangers, has just been published in 2022.

 

Publications

Elisabeth Hsu’s publications thematically arranged (PDF)

Elisabeth Hsu’s publications chronologically arranged (PDF)

Elisabeth Hsu's profile is highly transdisciplinary: she learned modern standard Chinese at the Beijing Language Institute in the People's Republic of China in 1978-79; completed the equivalent of a BSc and MSc in the Natural Sciences (Biology), Ecology, at ETH Zurich in 1979-84; a MPhil in General Linguistics in 1986-87 and a PhD in Social Anthropology in 1987-92, both from the University of Cambridge. She thereupon worked as Assistant Professor in Social/Medical Anthropology at the Institute of Social Anthropology of the University of Zurich from 1992-96; as Chiang Chingkuo Teaching and Research Fellow in the History of Chinese Science, Technology and Medicine at the Faculty of Oriental Studies of the University of Cambridge from 1996-99; and as Swiss National Foundation Research Fellow from 1997-99. She completed her Habilitation in Chinese Studies at the University of Heidelberg in 2002.

Elisabeth Hsu did long term field research in the PR China (Kunming city, Yunnan province, 1988-89; see monograph The Transmission of Chinese Medicine, 1999) and in East Africa (between 2001-08, 9 field trips; see monograph Chinese Medicine in East Africa: An Intimacy with Strangers, 2022). She also has conducted research into kinship and relatedness based on field trips into remote areas of Southwest China (since 1979, 10x); on tactility in caring practices and technologies of the self after fieldwork in Huizhou (since 1997, 3x); and on the Neolithic gaze based on treks through historic English landscapes (since 2013, regularly). Finally, she has conducted ethnobiological and linguistic anthropological research, as well as textual translation work, into the interpretation of the practical applications of the herbal antimalarial qinghao in Chinese formulae and materia medica, namely the fangji and bencao literatures from 168 BCE-1911, in collaboration with academic staff working at the Swiss Tropical Institute in Basel; in the Pharmacognosy team in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Bradford; and at the Traditional Chinese Medicine Universities of Shanghai, Nanjing and Beijing.