Speaker: Fa-Ti Fan, Professor of History, Binghamton University, State University of New York

This talk discusses the modes of disaster governance and crisis management in China from the early Mao to the post-Covid era. We will start with the 1960s-70s when China was going through severe political crises, natural disasters, and geopolitical challenges. We will then broaden the timeframe and trace major similarities and changes in disaster governance from the early years of the communist regime to the present. My main focus is on state policies, but I will also discuss political participation from various social and political groups in times of disaster or crisis.

Professor Fan is a historian of science and of modern China. His research and teaching have focused on three related areas – history of environmental sciences, 20^th-century China, and science and empire. He is the author of British Naturalists in Qing China: Science, Empire, and Cultural Encounter (2004; Chinese translation 2011) and dozens of essays on a range of topics in history and in science studies. He is currently completing two books, one on earthquakes in communist China and the other on science and politics in republican China.