Kyonghee Lee

Kyonghee Lee is a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) in Berlin, working within the Department of Artifacts, Action, Knowledge. Her research focuses on the historical movement and transformation of agricultural knowledge in fifteenth- to seventeenth-century Korea, examining how knowledge traveled across East Asian borders.

Her scholarly interests span intellectual history, classical East Asian political thought, and the history of knowledge systems. She investigates how premodern Korean societies adapted Chinese institutional models, particularly examining the community compact (hyang'yak) as a framework for local organization that operated through Confucian ritualism rather than binary government-autonomy distinctions.

Lee's work demonstrates significant trends in cross-cultural knowledge transfer within the Sinosphere, revealing how agricultural manuals and compendia served as vehicles for technological and conceptual exchange. Her research bridges historical analysis with contemporary understandings of knowledge circulation in premodern societies.

As a researcher, she has participated in significant international projects including 'Entangled Parliamentarisms: Constitutional Practices in Russia, Ukraine, China and Mongolia, 1905–2005' (ERC ENTPAR) and 'East Asian Uses of the European Past: Tracing Braided Chronotypes (EAU-TBC)', demonstrating her engagement with comparative constitutional history across Eurasia.