Baihui Duan

Baihui is a postdoctoral researcher employed by the Aftermath project. Her research examines the history of war, the environment, disease, medicine, and governance in East Asia, particularly after the East Asian War of 1592-1598. Combining approaches from history and geographic and statistical analysis, she examines how nature and infectious diseases shaped migration, disaster relief, medical care, law, and governance in pre-modern Korea. She also considers how the impact of epidemics spread beyond Korea’s borders to affect East Asian military strategy, commerce, diplomacy, and the circulation of medical knowledge, shedding light on interlinked histories of infectious diseases and environmental crises in the region. Through a comparison with the European history of public health, her project also contributes to the neglected field of epidemic management in pre-modern East Asia, opening up questions of power and its political meaning in global discourses of health.