Ren-Yuan Li

Ren-Yuan Li is an Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, and serves as Director of the IHP Archives. His research focuses on books, knowledge systems, and societal structures in imperial China, with expertise in textual analysis and dissemination of knowledge across social layers.

• PhD in East Asian Languages and History from Harvard University (2014)
• Director of Scripta Sinica and Database of Chinese Historical Biographies
• Current research explores leishu (encyclopedias) and commercial publication in late imperial China

His work spans handwritten and printed texts, analyzing their circulation from village to intellectual levels. At the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG), he co-led the working group 'Common Knowledge and Its Sources in the Sinosphere, 14th to 20th Centuries.'