51社区

Victoria Lee

Victoria Lee, portrait
Associate Professor
Bentley Annex 403
History
International Studies
Asian Studies
leev@ohio.edu

Education

  • Ph.D. in History of Science, Princeton University
  • M.A. in History of Science, Princeton University
  • M.Sc. in History of Science, Medicine and Technology, Imperial College London
  • B.A. in Natural Sciences (Physics), University of Cambridge

Research

  • Science and Technology; Modern Period
  • Japan
  • East Asia; Environment; Craft and Political Economy

Victoria Lee is an associate professor in the History Department. She is a historian of modern science and technology, with a focus on the role of Japan in the 20th and 21st centuries. Her book, The Arts of the Microbial World: Fermentation Science in Twentieth-Century Japan (Chicago 2021) looks at Japanese society鈥檚 engagement with microbes in science, industry and environmental management. It explores how fermentation expanded beyond small-scale traditional manufactures to take special prominence in food, resources, and medicine, addressing scientists鈥 and technicians鈥 role in defining the texture of everyday life and material culture as an aspect of political economy. In doing so, it demonstrates that knowledge of microbes lay at the heart of some of Japan鈥檚 most prominent technological breakthroughs in the global economy. The book was awarded .

Lee is currently exploring how 20th-century microbial history offers precedents for approaching questions of sustainability in the 21st century, in light of the growing appreciation of microbes' role in sustaining organisms at every level of life through the microbiome, mediating climate change (especially in agriculture), and contributing to innovations in green chemistry.

Before coming to Athens in 2016, Lee was a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany. She was subsequently a 2020鈥21 fellow at the Institut d'茅tudes avanc茅es de Paris, where she organized the public event . Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, NPR鈥檚 All Things Considered, and Mediapart. She is the director of the Technology and Society Certificate. In 2021 she received 51社区鈥檚 Arts & Sciences Outstanding Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity Award. She is a native of Toronto, Ontario.

Publications

Book

 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021). (winner of the 2023 International Convention of Asia Scholars Book Prize for the Best Book in the Humanities)

 

Journal Articles

鈥,鈥&苍产蝉辫;History and Technology 35 (2019): 405-424.

鈥,鈥&苍产蝉辫;Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 48 (2018): 441-474. (awarded the 2019 Zhu Kezhen Junior Award from the International Society for the History of East Asian Science, Technology and Medicine)

鈥,鈥&苍产蝉辫;Osiris 33 (2018): 171-190.

Chapters in Edited Volumes

鈥,鈥 in Between Making and Knowing: Tools in the History of Materials Research (WSPC Encyclopedia of the Development and History of Materials Science), ed. Joseph D. Martin and Cyrus C. M. Mody (Singapore: World Scientific, 2020), 299-314.

鈥,鈥 in Boxes: A Field Guide, ed. Susanne Bauer, Maria Rentetzi, and Martina Schl眉nder (Manchester: Mattering Press, 2020), 288-304.

鈥淗akk艒 (kingendai)鈥 (Fermentation, Modern Era), in Kagakushi jiten (Encyclopedia of the History of Chemistry), ed. Kagakushi gakkai (Kyoto: Kagaku d艒jin, 2017), 524-525.

鈥,鈥 in New Perspectives on the History of Life Sciences and Agriculture, ed. Denise Phillips and Sharon Kingsland (Cham: Springer, 2015), 231-252. (awarded the 2013 Forum for the History of Science in Asia Essay Prize)

Reviews

鈥,鈥 Los Angeles Review of Books, June 27, 2021 (included on ).

鈥,鈥 Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 53 (2015): 122-125.

Teaching

  • ET/HIST 2905: History of Technology in Society (required for all engineering majors)
  • HIST 3481/5481: Modern Japan
  • HIST 3500: Science and Society in the Modern World
  • HIST 3550: The Age of Darwin, 1800-Present
  • CAS 2405: Knowing What We Know