Prof. Dagmar Schäfer
Director, Department III: Artefacts, Action and Knowledge, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG), Germany
Professor, Chinese Studies and History of Technology, the University of Manchester, UK
Director, Centre for Chinese Studies, the University of Manchester, UK

Dagmar Schäfer is the Director of Department III “Artefacts, Action and Knowledge” of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Germany. She is also a Professor of Chinese Studies and History of Technology and Director of the Centre for Chinese Studies at the University of Manchester, UK.

Technology as both a topic and an analytical category stands at the heart of her research work. Professor Schäfer has worked on the politics of silk manufacturing; practices, concepts and philosophies of knowing in seventeenth century Ming-China, and Qing court strategies of communicating craft know-how. Her research interests include History of Science and Technology in China, Historical Chinese cultures of knowledge, Chinese Economy and Social History, and Material Culture.

Currently she is working closely with Database Developers, GIS specialists and Digitalization Designers to explore knowledge access and innovate research methods within the humanities.

Her publication The Crafting of the 10,000 Things: Knowledge and Technology in Seventeenth-Century China (2011) earned her the renowned Pfizer Award of the History of Science Society and Joseph Levenson Book Prize of the Association for Asian Studies.