Dr Dror Weil

I am a historian of pre-modern Asia, with a particular interest in scientific and other textual exchanges between the Islamicate world and China; cultural, intellectual and social histories of Late Imperial China; histories of medicine and science in Asia; and, histories of the book and textuality.
I studied for my BA degree in East Asian Studies and Economics at Tel Aviv University, and for an MA degree in History at National Chengchi University (政治大學) in Taipei. I earned a PhD degree from Princeton University with a dissertation titled: "The Vicissitudes of Late Imperial China's Accommodation of Arabo-Persian Knowledge of the Natural World, 16th-18th Centuries" in 2016. I was a recipient of the Thomas Arthur Arnold Fund for Excellence in Historical Research fellowship at the Zvi Yavetz School of Historical Studies, Tel Aviv University in 2017 and held postdoctoral fellowships at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and the Berlin Center for the History of Knowledge between 2017-2019.
Before taking up a university lectureship at Cambridge in 2021, I held a permanent lectureship in History of Asia pre-1750 at the Department of History, King's College London. In 2022, I was invited to serve as a Visiting Professor at EHESS (Paris and Marseille).
ORCID ID: 0000-0001-6098-0950
I welcome inquiries from prospective graduate students interested in the history of the East Asia and the Islamicate World - from the late medieval to the 19th century, and in particular, those who wish to study cross-cultural movements of knowledge, texts, objects and people. I also welcome applications from students who wish to research the histories of Islam, Judaism and Christianity in China, the Mongol empire, Ilkhanid and Safavid Iran, and Yuan-Ming-Qing histories.
For undergraduates, I am one of the conveners of the first-year overview papers 'O5: Europe in the World, 1450-1780' and 'Paper 21: Empires and world history from the 15th century to the First World War', and the first-year Sources option 'Reading Early Modern Asian Empires'. I also lecture in Part II papers 'Early Science and Medicine' and 'Paper 14: Material culture in the early modern world'.
At the postgraduate level, I serve as the Director of the MPhil in World History, and the convenor of the core paper 'Debates in World History' and the optional paper 'The Global Early Modern Period'. I also lecture in the Early Modern History MPhil core paper 'Sources and Methods'.
I am also one of the convenors of the World History research seminar series.
Contact
Tags & Themes
Faculty of History, West Rd, Cambridge CB3 9EF
Key publications:
Edited volumes
Selected articles and book chapters
“Time and Temporalities in Early Modern Chinese Islam”, Journal for the History of Knowledge (accepted, expected 2024).
"Straddling Boundaries: The Accommodation of Mirṣād al-‘Ibad in Early Modern China", International Journal of Asian Studies (accepted, expected 2024).
co-authored with Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, “Chapter 29 - Galen in Premodern Tibet and China: Impressions and Footprints,” in Peter Singer and Ralph Rosen (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Galen (Oxford, Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2023).