Lena Springer

Lena Springer is a Research Associate in the History and Philosophy of Science at King’s College London, affiliated with the Department of Theology & Religious Studies and the Lau China Institute. Her work focuses on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), indigenous botanical knowledge, and the intersection of environmental cosmology with healing practices. She leads the ERC-funded Cosmological Visionaries project exploring climate change responses in China-Russia border regions.

Education: D.Phil. in Sinology from the University of Vienna (focus: transmission of scientific heritage in China). Research includes ethnographic fieldwork across China’s ethnic regions, examining multi-ethnic folk medicines and materia medica histories. She has held roles as Senior Research Fellow at Sichuan University and Affiliate of the Austrian Academy of Sciences' Institute for Social Anthropology.

Research interests include biosocial interactions in indigenous sciences, the preservation of traditional medical landscapes, and academic migration dynamics. Her forthcoming book Arztgeschichten adopts a biographical approach to 20th-century TCM evolution, while her database work bridges historical pharma-recipes with modern drug development.

Funding comes from the Wellcome Trust, EU Synergy Grants, and institutions in China/Taiwan. Teaching includes Sinology, pharmacognosy, and narrative-biographical methods. Public engagement includes media commentary on TCM innovations and heritage preservation projects.