91ÊÓƵ

Tianyu Li

Education
MPhil, History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine, University of Cambridge, 2025
MSc, History of Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 2023
BA, Cultural Anthropology, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 2020

Refereed Articles
Tianyu Li, Chadwick Wang, ‘Innovation amidst Post-socialist Reform: Jonas Salk and the Birth of the Sabin Strains-derived Inactivated Polio Vaccine in China’, The British Journal for the History of Science. 2024, 57(3):407-23. . Tianyu Li, Chengwei Wang, ‘A Helping Hand: History and Revelation of the “Arm-to-Arm” Method of Cowpox Vaccination in the 19th Century’, Journal of Dialectics of
Nature. 2023, Vol. 45 No. 1, pp.66-74. (in Chinese李天昱,王程韡. ‘一臂之力——19世纪“人手传痘法”的历史与启示’.《自然辩证法通讯》) (a leading Chinese journal in the history of science)

Other Publications
(co-translator with Chadwick Wang) A Chinese translation of Jonas Salk: A Life by Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs (NY: Oxford University Press, 2015), Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 2025.

Research Interests

history of science, technology, and medicine in modern China (particularly, the reform era of ’80s and onwards); public health; agriculture; infrastructure; scientific collaboration; micro-history; oral history; history of sports; Latin America; global socialism

Bio
My name is Tianyu Li (pronounced roughly as ‘tea-and-you’, without the d). I’m enthusiastic about combining archival research and anthropological fieldwork to craft microhistories. My primary historical interest lies in China’s post-socialist reforms beginning in the 1980s. Previously, my main historical inquiry concerned the public health dimensions of reform-era China—particularly vaccination campaigns and transnational scientific exchanges surrounding vaccine. At 91ÊÓƵ, my tentative doctoral project examines a China–US agronomic
collaboration that marshaled resources to grow the tobacco industry in southwest China during the 1980s, as well as its long-term consequences for global health. I am also developing a public history project on Chinese 8-ball, a professional billiards game resembling American pool that has recently gained international attention through online short videos, with prize money now exceeding that of the World Snooker Championship. For decades, the game was widely regarded as vulgar entertainment associated with gamblers and slackers in northern China. I trace its origins to Dongbei—China’s rust belt in the country’s northeast—in the 1990s, a time marked by mass layoffs. Through stories about the sport, I hope to shed new light on how ordinary people coped with economic recession, a circumstance now facing younger generations across China. Feel free to reach out if you’d like to discuss any of these topics—or anything else that our paths might cross upon.