Dr Xun Zhou

Biography

I grew up in southwest China. In the past 30 years I have lived, studied and lectured in Jerusalem, Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Chicago, London and Berlin. I am one of Europe’s most productive historians working at the boundaries of health, medicine, science, religion and everyday life in modern China. I have a track record in trans-cultural/global studies and in particular the history of global health. My research interests range from medicine, health intervention and delivery in modern China to nutrition, food and narcotics, and more broadly the political history of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as well as in questions of race and ethnicity. My recent book The People’s Health: Health Intervention and Delivery in Mao’s China, 1949-1983 (2020) is the first systematic study of health care and medicine in Mao’s China. This research was funded by the European Commission Research Executive Agency. Drawing on hundreds of files from rarely seen party archives and oral testimonies from experts, local cadres, and villagers across China, I shifted my historian's gaze away from official statistics towards the records of local institutions and the personal memories that reflect and give voice to lived experiences. Through the everyday interactions of policy makers, national and local administrations, and communities, this book illustrates the dynamic relationship between politics and health, and between individual lives and the political system. My co-authored new book 'I Know Who Caused COVID-19': Pandemics and Xenophobia (2021) explores how blame was attributed during the Covid-19 pandemic. By dissecting the terms of some of the most contentious and polarising debates that emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic — trust in science versus anti-science/scepticism about science, and support for mask or vaccine mandates versus libertarian notions of freedom — our book urges the reader to resist comfortable and simplistic arguments. By focusing on how prejudices operate in society, the book asks the crucial question: whose lives and what kind of lives are perceived to matter and get framed as worth saving in a pandemic? I am also among a growing number of historians who are pioneering the history of the People's Republic of China through the use of new oral and archival evidence. Based on the thousands of archival documents and hundreds of interviews I have collected, my two books The Great Famine in China, 1958-1962: A Documentary History (2012) and Forgotten Voices of Mao's Great Famine, 1958-1961: An Oral History (2014) have helped to reshape our understanding of modern Chinese history. In 2021-22, I was a Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (WiKo) Fellow. At WiKo I worked on a new monograph ‘Coping mechanism and everyday survival tactics', using the the Great Leap Forward famine as a case study to explore how rural villagers in China understood the famine and state propaganda, and the wide range of mechanisms they employed to cope with hunger, illness and loss on such massive scale and in the context of older traditions and belief systems. In addition to my academic work, I have been active in media activities. Some of my interviews with famine survivors appeared in the award-winning French documentary film Mao's Great Famine (2012). During 2012 and 2013, I wrote a regular Op-Ed column on contemporary issues in China for the South China Morning Post, the most important English newspaper in Hong Kong. From the onset of the Covid-19 crisis in January 2020, I have been interviewed regularly by media outlets including the BBC, the Financial Times, The Guardian, the New York Times, and Aljazeera, among others, commenting on the outbreak in Wuhan and on the Chinese health system as well as speaking about historical global pandemics. In October 2020, I was a keynote speaker at the Royal Society of Medicine (RSM)’s Pathology Council’s webinar conference ‘SARS CoV 2: Emergence to Impact’.

Qualifications

• BA Sichuan

• MA London

• PhD London

• FHEA

Appointments

University of Essex

• Lead for International Partnerships, Department of History, University of Essex (1/7/2018 - 31/7/2023)

• Study Abroad Officer, Department of History, University of Essex (3/8/2020 - 31/7/2023)

• Ethics (Research) Officer, Department of History, University of Essex (15/8/2022 - 31/7/2023)

• Deputy Director of Research and Impact Officer, Department of History, University of Essex (15/8/2022 - present)

• Postgraduate Research Director, Department of History, University of Essex (1/8/2023 - 17/12/2023)

• Ethics (Research) Officer, School of Philosophical, Historical and Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Essex (1/8/2023 - 17/12/2023)

• Ethics Sub Committee Memember, University of Essex (1/8/2022 - 22/12/2023)

Other academic

• Reader in History, School of Philosophical, Historical and Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Essex (1/10/2016 - present)