Prof. Catherine Jami

Catherine Jami is a Research Director at the French CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research). Trained in mathematics and in Chinese studies, she works on the history of Chinese mathematics and on the circulation of knowledge within China and between East Asia and Europe in the early modern period. In particular, she studies the development of the mathematical sciences and their appropriation by the imperial state during the late Ming (1368-1644) and early Qing (1644-1911) periods.

She has been the Secretary General of IUHPST-DHST (2013-2021) and the editor of East Asian Science, Technology and Medicine (2017-2024). She is currently a member of the Governing Board of the International Science Council. In addition to her historical research, she has also been active in promoting gender equality in science.

She is a life member of Churchill College, where she held a French Government Fellowship from 2004 to 2006, and an associate of Clare Hall.

Link to CNRS webpage: https://ccj.ehess.fr/membres/catherine-jami

Some recent publications

2026                with Christopher Cullen (in press) “Was it ‘western’, or just ‘new’? Controversies about naming European astronomy in early Qing China,” Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage 29.

2025                “‘An Old China Hand Who Loved the Chinese People’: Herbert Chatley (1885‑1955), civil engineer and historian of Chinese science and technology,” Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale 61 (Supplement): 13-44.  http://doi.org/10.30687/AnnOr/2385-3042/2025/02/001

2024                “Kangxi gongting li de Faguo huangjia kexue: yanjiu yu jiaoxue” 清康熙宫廷里的法国皇家科学：研究与教学, Gugong bowuyuan yuankan 故宫博物院院刊 264 : 4-17.

2023                with Bing Zhao, “Objets émaillés, techniques et pouvoir. Nouveau focus sur les échanges sino-français au xviiie siècle,” Artefact : Techniques, Histoire et Sciences Humaines 18: 9-21. https://doi.org/10.4000/artefact.13614

2022                with Christopher Cullen, “Prediction and politics in Beijing, 1668: A Jesuit astronomer and his technical resources in a time of crisis”, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 53,4: 422–474. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021828622111

2022                “From Heaven to Earth: circles and the construction of the imperial irder in late Ming and early Qing China”, in Bill M. Mak & Eric Huntington eds., Overlapping Cosmologies in Asia: Transcultural and Interdisciplinary Approaches. Leiden, Brill, pp. 170-193. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004511675_009

2022                “Jean-François Foucquet et les sciences”, in I. Landry-Deron ed., L’Europe missionnaire en Chine sous l’empereur Kangxi : Lettre du Père jésuite Jean-François Foucquet écrites de Chine à sa famille, Paris : Collège de France, pp. 291-303.

2021                “Women in science: from images to data”, Pure and Applied Chemistry, 93- 8: 955-961. https://doi.org/10.1515/pac-2021-0201

2020                with Christopher Cullen, “Christmas 1668 and after: how Jesuit astronomy was restored to power in Beijing”, Journal for the History of Astronomy 51,1: 3-50. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021828620901887

2017                Edited volume: Individual Itineraries and the Spatial Dynamics of Knowledge: Science, Technology and Medicine in China, 17th-20th centuries. Paris, Collège de France, x + 404 pp. (ISBN 978- 2-85757-077-6).

2026                International Science Council, InterAcademy Partnership and Standing Committee for Gender Equality in Science “Gender Equality in Scientific Organizations: Assessment and Recommendations,” https://doi.org/10.24948/2026.03

Complete Publications List: Jami publications complete