Research

Aside from journalism, Robert has published many articles and reviews in leading academic journals on the history of medicine, public health, science and technology, epidemics in Asia – as well as essays on colonialism, imperialism, geopolitics, and more. He has been the recipient of numerous research grant awards from major funding bodies, including the British Academy, the Onassis Foundation, and the Hong Kong Research Grants Council, and has lectured in institutions around the world. In 2018-2019, he collaborated with the Wellcome Trust on the Contagious Cities project, with cultural events hosted across New York, Hong Kong, and Geneva. He is founding editor of the Histories and Ecologies of Health series published by Pittsburgh University Press. Below is a selection of his academic writing.

2024

Review of Modern Flu: British Medical Science and the Viralisation of Influenza, 1890-1950 by Michael Bresalier, ISIS (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming).

2023

‘Epidemics in East Asia,’ ISIS (University of Chicago Press, 2023), vol.114, no.S1 [with Mei Li]: 364-419. Read here.

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    ‘Global Health,’ in Sari Altschuler, Jonathan Metzl, and Priscilla Wald, eds., Keywords for Health Humanities (New York: New York University Press, 2023), pp.96-98. Buy here.


    ‘Can Science and Technology Save China?’ China Review International (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2023).

2022

‘China and the Globalization of Biomedicine,’ The China Journal, vol.82 (Australian National University, 2022): 149-152.


‘Epidemics in the Past and Now: A Roundtable on Colonial and Post-Colonial History,’ Journal of Colonialism & Colonial History, vol.22, no.1 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021). Read here.

2020

‘Listening to Pandemics: Sonic Fictions and the Biology of Emergence,’ in Neel Ahuja, et al., eds., The Palgrave Handbook of Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century Literature and Science (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), pp.309-324. Buy here.

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    ‘The Crisis of Crisis: Rethinking Epidemics from Hong Kong,’ Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol.94, no.4 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020): 658-669.


    ‘The Chronopolitics of COVID-19,’ American Literature, vol.92, no.4 (Duke University Press, 2020): 767-779.


    ‘Viral surveillance and the 1968 Hong Kong Flu Pandemic,’ Journal of Global History, vol.15, no.3 (Cambridge University Press, 2020): 444-458.


    ‘COVID-19 and the Anti-Lessons of History,’ Lancet, vol.395 (March 14, 2020): 850-851. Read here.


    ‘Bad Meat: Food and the Medicine of Modern Hygiene in Colonial Hong Kong,’ in Angela Ki Che Leung and Melissa L. Caldwell, eds., Moral Foods: The Construction of Nutrition and Health in Modern Asia (Honolulu: Hawaii University Press, 2020), pp.173-198. Buy here.


    ‘Imperialism and Public Health in Iran,’ Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol.94, no.1 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020): 143-144.


    ‘Farewell to the God of Plague,’ China Review International, vol.25, no.1 (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2020): 43-45.

2019

‘Viral chatter and the Futures of Contagion,’ in Christian Borch, ed., Imitation, Contagion, Suggestion: On Mimesis and Society (New York: Routledge, ‘Culture, Economy and the Social’ series, 2019), pp.141-156. Buy here.

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    ‘Plague Views: Epidemics, Photography, and the Ruined City,’ in Lukas Engelmann, John Henderson, and Christos Lynteris, eds., Plague and the City (New York: Routledge, 2019), pp.91-115. Buy here.


    ‘Anarchitectures of Health: Futures for the Biomedical Drone,’ Global Public Health, vol.14, no.8 (Taylor & Francis: 2019): 1204-1219 [with Ria Sinha]


    ‘History of Medicine in Hong Kong,’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong, vol.59 (2019): 239-241.


    ‘Public Health and Urban Culture in Shanghai,’ Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, vol.74, no.4 (Oxford University Press, 2019): 480-482.


    ‘Public Health and the Modernization of China,’ American Historical Review, vol.124, no.2 (Oxford University Press, 2019): 641-642.

2018

‘Health Histories of Hong Kong,’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong, vol.58 (2018): 273-274

2017

‘Critical Mass: Colonial Crowds and Contagious Panics in 1890s Hong Kong and Bombay,’ in Harald Fischer-Tiné, ed., Anxieties, Fear and Panic in Colonial Settings: Empires on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, ‘Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies’ series, 2017), pp.369-391. Buy here.

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    ‘Satellites and the New War on Infection: Tracking Ebola in West Africa,’ Geoforum, vol.80 (Elsevier: 2017): 24-38 [with Ria Sinha].


    ‘Infectious Change: Reinventing Chinese Public Health After an Epidemic,’ Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol.91, no.2 (Johns Hopkins University: 2017): 464-465.

2016

‘Hong Kong Junk: Plague and the Economy of Chinese Things,’ Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol.90, no.1 (Johns Hopkins University Press: 2016): 32-60.

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    ‘Polio, Terror, and the Immunological Worldview,’ Global Public Health, vol.13, no.2 (Taylor & Francis: 2016): 189-210.


    ‘Symptoms of Empire: Cholera in Southeast Asia, 1820-1850,’ in Mark Jackson, ed., The Routledge History of Disease (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), pp.183-201. Buy here.


    ‘Spaces of Quarantine in Colonial Hong Kong,’ in Alison Bashford, ed., Quarantine: Local and Global Histories (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp.66-84. Buy here.

2015

‘Hygienic Nature: Afforestation and the Greening of Colonial Hong Kong,’ Modern Asian Studies, vol.49, no.4 (Cambridge University Press: 2015): 1177-1209.

 

‘The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850-1960,’ American Historical Review, vol.120, no.5 (Oxford University Press: 2015): 1873-1874.

2014

‘Games of Empire: Hunting in treaty-port China,’ in James Beattie, Edward Melilla, and Emily O’Gorman, eds., Eco-Cultural Networks and the British Empire: New Views on Environmental History (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), pp.202-232. Buy here

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    ‘Nightmare on Wall Street: Zombie Bankers and the New Contagion,’ in Sharon Packer and Jody Pennington, eds., A History of Evil in Popular Culture: What Hannibal Lecter, Stephen King, and Vampires Reveal about America, 2 vols. (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2014), vol.1, pp.237-248. Buy here .

2013

‘Contagion: Epidemiological models and financial Crises,’ Journal of Public Health, vol.36, no.1 (Oxford University Press: 2013): 13-17.

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    ‘Infective Economies: Empire, Panic and the Business of Disease,’ Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol.41, no.2 (Taylor & Francis: 2013): 211-237.


    ‘Economies of Contagion: Financial Crisis and Pandemic,’ Economy and Society, vol.42, no.2 (Taylor & Francis: 2013): 226-248 [Top Read Article]


    ‘Health and Hygiene in Chinese East Asia,’ The China Quarterly, vol.213 (Cambridge University Press: March 2013): 220-221.

2012

‘Social Entrepreneurship for Sexual Health (SESH): A New Approach for Enabling Delivery of Sexual Health Services Among Most-at-Risk Populations,’ with Joseph D. Tucker, Kevin A. Fenton, and Rosanna W. Peeling, PLoS Medicine, 9/7 (July 2012).

2011

‘Diseasing the City: Colonial Noir and the Ruins of Modernity,’ Fast Capitalism, vol.8, no.1 (2011). Read here.

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    ‘Urban Modernity: Cultural Innovation in the Second Industrial Revolution,’ Centaurus: An International Journal of the History of Science and its Cultural Aspects, vol.53, no.4 (Wiley-Blackwell: 2011): 333-334.

2010

‘Medicine for Humanities? On Travelling Cultures and Interdisciplinarity,’ Chinese Medical Humanities Review, 3 (University of Peking: 2010): 19-24 [in Chinese].

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    ‘The History of Medicine: Challenges and Futures,’ Perspectives on History, vol.48, no.8 (American Historical Association: November 2010): 45-47. Read here.

2009

‘The City of Knowledge: Rethinking the History of Science and Urban Planning,’ Planning Perspectives, vol.24, no.4 (Taylor and Francis: October 2009): 521-535.

Cultural Archive

‘Landscape in Film,’ in James S. Duncan, Nuala C. Johnson, and Richard Schein, eds., Companion to Cultural Geography (Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 2004), pp.420-429. Buy here.

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    ‘Internal Colonialism: Nation and Region in Nineteenth-Century Greece,’ in Maria Todorova, ed., Balkan Identities: Nation and Memory (New York: New York University Press, 2004), pp.41-59. Buy here.


    ‘The Uncertain State of Islands: Nationalism and the Discourse of Islands in Britain and Greece,’ Journal of Historical Geography, vol.29, no.4 (Elsevier: October 2003): 499-515.


    ‘Islands Apart,’ in Stephanos Stephanides and Susan Bassett, eds., Translating Floating Islands (University of Bologna: COPTERA Reader Series, 2002), pp.85-89.


    ‘Voyages and Visions: Towards a Cultural History of Travel,’ Social & Cultural Geography, vol.2, no.1 (Taylor and Francis: 2001): 101-105.


    ‘Map Mania: Nationalism and the Politics of Place in Greece,’ Political Geography, vol.19, no.1 (Elsevier: January 2000): 77-95.


    ‘The Films of Theo Angelopoulos,’ Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, vol.24 (University of Birmingham, 2000): 299-303.


    Essays on ‘Thodoros Angelopoulos,’ ‘Michalis Cacoyannis,’ ‘Cinema,’ ‘Alexandros Papayannis,’ and Emmanouil Roidis,’ in Graham Speake, ed., Encylopedia of Greece and the Hellenic Tradition, 2 vols (London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000), I, pp.81-82, 275-276, 341-343; II, pp.1242-1244 and 1453-1455.


    ‘The Exoticism of the Familiar and the Familiarity of the Exotic: Fin-de-siècle travellers to Greece,’ in James S. Duncan and Derek Gregory, eds., Writes of Passage: Reading Travel Writing (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), pp.164-184. Buy here.


    ‘Diseased Bodies of the Nation: Suicide in Fin-de-Siècle Greece,’ Journal of Mediterranean Studies, vol.9, no.2 (University of Malta: 1999): 155-173.


    ‘Consuming Nations,’ in Sian Griffiths and Jenny Wallace, eds., Consuming Passions: Food in the Age of Anxiety (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), pp.171-182. Buy here.


    ‘Papadiamantis, Ecumenism, and the Theft of Byzantium,’ in Paul Magdalino and David Ricks, eds., Byzantium and the Modern Greek Identity (Ashgate: Aldershot, 1998), pp.91-104. Buy here.


    ‘Between East and West: The Border Writing of Yeoryios Vizyinos,’ Cultural Geographies (formerly Ecumene), vol.3, no.2 (Sage: April 1996): 167-180.


    ‘Papadiamantis and the Economy of the Imagination,’ Revue des Etudes Néo-Helléniques, vol.IV, nos.1-2 (1995): 35-69 [in Greek: ‘Ο Παπαδιαμάντης και η οικονομία της φαντασίας’]


    ‘Alexandros Papadiamantis (1851-1911): Dostoevsky’s First Greek Translator,’ Dostoevsky Studies, vols.2-6 (1994-1998): 137-140.


    ‘Memory and Homelands: Vizyinos, Papadimantis, and Geographical Imagination,’ Kambos: Cambridge Papers in Modern Greek, no.3 (University of Cambridge: 1995): 95-123.


    ‘Dostoevsky and the Sartorial Motif in Papadiamantis,’ Papadiamantika Tetradia, no.3 (Athens: Domos, Spring 1995): 41-52.


    ‘Arboreal Symbolism in Papadiamantis,’ Ellinika, 44 (1994): 147-157 [in Greek: ‘O Παπαδιαμάντης και η έννοια του δένδρου’].


    Essays in Tracy Chevalier, ed., Contemporary World Writers (‘Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke’ and ‘Odysseus Elytis’) (Detroit and London: St James, 1993), pp.22-24 and 160-162.


    ‘Représentation Des Grecs Modernes Par la France révolutionnaire,’ Istor, no.6 (December 1993): 161- 165.


    ‘Cavafy and the Poetics of Space,’ Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora, vol.17, no.1 (1991): 37-48.


    ‘Yannis Ritsos, 1909-1990,’ Mediterraneans, 2-3 (1991): 327-331. Read here.