Lena Springer gained her D. Phil. in Sinology from the University of Vienna, with research focusing upon the transmission of medical and scientific heritage in China.

She is currently a Research Associate in the History and Philosophy of Science with the ERC-funded Cosmological Visionaries project based out of the Department of Theology & Religious Studies at King’s College London. Lena’s current research focuses upon traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and indigenous botanical knowledge. Her forthcoming book on this area Arztgeschichten: Zur chinesischen Medizinkultur, 1926-2015 (Physicians’ Histories: On Chinese Medical Culture, 1926-2015) is developing a biographical and translocal approach to shifts and changes in Han-centred medical practice. Her ethnographic search on apothecaries has taken her deep into the histories of materia medica science in Western China and Tibet.

Lena publishes on indigenous knowledge, ethnographic archivers and medical-history-writers in China, spatial and social migration to Europe, and the anthropology of science. Between 2005 and 2019 she conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork in different environments in China, as well as narrative-biographical interviews about changing occupational paths in academia. Her research was supported by funders in the UK and US, China and Taiwan, Austria, Germany and Switzerland, and the EU. (For example, the Wellcome Trust and Academia Sinica.)

As a Senior Research Fellow of Sichuan University, Lena investigated multi-ethnic folk medicines in China’s West. In a database team at Charité Medical University Berlin, she designed the translation, scientific identification and interdisciplinary accessibility of Chinese historical pharma-recipes. Lena is also currently an Affiliate of the Lau China Institute and associated researcher of the Institute for Social Anthropology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. 

Research interests and PhD supervision

• Indigenous-Scientific Encounters and Biosocial Interactions

Environmental, cosmological knowledge and traditional healing require preservation —and natural conservation of the landscapes which sustain the livelihoods and resources of this heritage. To sustain such indigenous contributions to the respective rural sciences, and to find responses to climate change, we need to better understand how humans interact with beings and materials in biological, technological, topographic, ethnic and historical landscapes.

• History of Science, Chinese Medicines, and Botany in East Asia

Materia Medica are a unique case that challenges the current Euro-centred academic mainstream and its historiography. This undercurrent in world science, and the early, medieval and folk history in this multi-disciplinary field, are easily overlooked and still understudied, especially in the vast West of present-day China.

• Ethnography, Oral history and Historiography in China

The available historical record in Western China is more focused on pre-modern sources and scattered surveys than in the East of China. Consequently, Chinese folk culture and multi-ethnic regional dynamics shed light on heritage and history of science in China, even in the modern and contemporary context.

• Spatial and Social Mobility in Higher Education and Academia

Elite and outcasts are most often researched in separate projects of migration studies. Academic migrants from China in Austria are one case where China plays a strong role on both levels, especially through mobility in healthcare and higher education, both as a source of tradition and of scientific innovation.

Teaching

Healing, folk culture and science from China; Chinese modern history and society, culture and language; Cross-regional ethnicity and material culture; Anthropology of science; Narrative-biographical interviews.

Lena has taught Sinology, co-supervised interdisciplinary students and organised summer schools for Sinologists and pharmacognosists in China.

Expertise and public engagement

Past and present of science, materials and culture in China; Migration; Radio and Newspaper interviews (e.g. about the Nobel Prize for Artemisin discovery, about migrants from China to the German-speaking world); Consultancy (Chinese materials and culture, medicinal and nutritious plants in Southern China, intangible cultural heritage status).

Based on her textual analysis and fieldwork throughout China’s diverse regions and ethnic markets, Lena has provided applied science and consultancy service for a major international company and for local heritage projects in China.

Springer, L. with Tony Milligan (2023), ‘Should I have children? Here’s what the philosophers say’, The Conversation (including Japanese and Spanish translations).

Selected publications

• Springer, L. (forthcoming), Arztgeschichten: Zur chinesischen Medizinkultur, 1926-2015 ((in German: Physicians' Histories: On Chinese Medical Culture, 1926-2015), deGruyter, book series Worlds of East Asia for the Swiss Asia Society, Behr, W., Chiavacci, D., Riemenschnitter, A., Souyri, Pierre F.,Steineck, Raji C., Zhang, L. and Zufferey, N. (eds) Berlin, Boston: de Gruyter Mouton.
• Springer, L. with Qi Zhou (2024), ’The Channel Branches & Network Vessels on the Tianhui Lacquered Meridian Figurine: Taking the Heart-Regulated Channel as an Example’, Chinese Medicine and Culture 7(3), pp. 222-232. DOI:1097/MC9.0000000000000112
• Springer, L. (2022), ‘Encounters with Linnaeus? Modernisation of Pharmacopoeia through Bernard Read and Zhao Yuhuang up to the Present’, ch. 48, in Lo, V./ Stanley-Baker (eds), Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 669-686. DOI: 10.4324/9780203740262-56
• L. with Qiaofeng Chen (2021), ‘SuperTCM: A biocultural database combining biological pathways and historical linguistic data of Chinese Materia Medica for drug development’, Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopha.2021.112315.
• Springer, L. (2019), ‘Taibai Materia Medica: “Unofficial Physicians” in Northwestern China’, special issue ‘Nouvelles géographies de la collecte. Perspectives croisées sur le «cueilleurs» contemporains/ New Spaces of Collection: Crossing Perspectives on Today ‘Gatherers’, EchoGéo. DOI: 10.4000/echogeo.17396
• Springer, L. (2016), ‘德、奥、瑞’ (in Chinese: Germany, Austria, Switzerland), in ZHU, Jianping (ed.), 百年中医史 (The History of Chinese Medicine during the Last One Hundred Years), (published on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the China Academy for Chinese Medical Sciences), Shanghai China: P.R. Shanghai Science and Technology Publishing House, pp. 1178-1186.
• Springer, L. (2015, © 2016, open access PMC 2017), ‘Collectors, Producers, and Circulators of Tibetan and Chinese Medicines in Sichuan Province’, in double special Issue (Guest editor with Mona Schrempf) "Efficacy and Safety in Tibetan and Chinese Medicine: Ethnographic and Historical Perspectives”, Asian Medicine 10 (1+2), Brill, pp. 177-220. PMID: 28239310, PMCID: PMC5321519, DOI: 1163/15734218-12341357