Professor Elisabeth Hsu

Professor Elisabeth Hsu is a Governing Body Fellow of Green Templeton College and a member of the Fellowship Committee. She is Professor of Anthropology at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford.

Research area:

Elisabeth’s research fields include: Medical anthropology, ethnobotany, sensory anthropology, anthropology and language, ethnographic methods; Chinese medicine studies, textual studies, semantics and pragmatics.

Fieldwork conducted in the PR China; Southwest China; East Africa.

Textual studies conducted on Han received literature (Historical Records, chapter 105B), Dunhuang medieval medical manuscripts (on pulses), Ming-Qing martial arts manuals (on Yijin jing), Han-to-Ming materia medica on the herbal antimalarial qinghao (A. annua L.)

Since 2011 involved in the translation of all qinghao recipes of the computerised Chinese formulary archive (ca 450), with a group of Traditional Chinese Medicine professors of the TCM Universities in Beijing and Shanghai.

Other info:

Medical Anthropology has had a low-key but continuous presence in the college since 2001. The Green Templeton Medical Anthropology Discussion Group was founded in 2002 and, with the help of a small academic grant, substantially transformed in 2014 to become Green Templeton Medical Anthropology Film and Discussion Group.

Contact: elisabeth.hsu@anthro.ox.ac.uk