Dr Mary Brazelton

Mary Brazelton has written, researched, and taught on a range of topics in the history of science and medicine in modern China. Her 2019 book, Mass Vaccination: Citizens' Bodies and State Power in Modern China, examines the history of mass immunisation in twentieth-century China. 

Academic interests

Mary Brazelton’s academic interests include: 

• History of public and global health
• Global studies of science, technology, and medicine
• Modern Chinese history.

Degrees obtained

• BA, Harvard.
• MPhil, Yale.
• PhD, Yale.

Awards and prizes

• Student-led Teaching Award in Partnership, Cambridge University Students’ Union, 2020.
• Zhu Kezhen Senior Award, article prize given by the International Society for the History of East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine, 2019.

Biography

Mary Brazelton is an historian of science and medicine in modern China. Her 2019 book, Mass Vaccination: Citizens' Bodies and State Power in Modern China, examines the history of mass immunisation in twentieth-century China; a forthcoming book with Cambridge University Press surveys the roles played by China and Chinese-speaking peoples in the history of international and global health. Her research interests lie broadly in historical intersections of science, technology, and medicine in China and around the world. Current projects include a study of the Sino-French Institute in Lyon, a collaborative exploration of the history of transportation technologies with particular consideration for transnational histories of civil aviation, and the early history of penicillin development in China. 

At Cambridge, she is also an associate member of the World History Subject Group in the History Faculty, as well as a Trustee and Research Fellow of the Needham Research Institute. 

Other interests

Cycling, hiking, fiction.