Short Biography

Renée Krusche is a historian of modern China with a special interest in medical history. She is a Postdoc at Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), where in 2020 she finished her PhD on the topic of health practices and civilization diseases in Mao era China. Currently she is researching Chinese veterinary history, historical human-animal relations in Asia, Chinese gendered health practices and the tradition of Yoga in Republican China.

Project

The entwined worlds of humans and animals develop complex relations not only in our modern life, but also in history. This project embarks on a journey towards understanding the exegesis of biomedical veterinary practices in the Republican era, a time when the Chinese state was modernized, strengthened and improved through the use of science. It highlights the links between human health and animal health at a time of great ideological, social and institutional changes, and understands veterinary science as a tool to bring order to the intermingling realms of reality. The introduction of veterinary science as part of the modernization process and renunciation of old Chinese medical culture poses an example of global knowledge transfer, crisis management and inter-species engagement to make a safer and healthier world.