Florence Hsia

Florence Hsia is a Professor of History of Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She earned her PhD in History from the University of Chicago (1999) and an AB in East Asian Studies from Princeton University (1990).

Research Interests: Hsia specializes in the historical construction of sinographic expertise in early modern Europe, focusing on how knowledge about China coalesced through the Latin Republic of Letters. Her work bridges disciplines like linguistics, ethnography, astronomy, and cartography, emphasizing the materiality of textual and archival practices.

Key Publications include her monograph Sojourners in a Strange Land: Jesuits and Their Scientific Missions in Late Imperial China (2009) and the chapter Astronomy After the Deluge (2017), which examines Enlightenment-era global observational networks. These works highlight her interest in cross-cultural scientific collaboration and archival reasoning.

Affiliations: As a member of the Archives of the Sciences Working Group in Department II at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG), she contributes to interdisciplinary research on the global dimensions of scientific knowledge.