Dagmar Schäfer

Dagmar Schäfer is a German professor and the managing director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin. She is honorary professor, history of technology, Technical University, Berlin; adjunct professor, Institute of Sinology, Freie Universität, Berlin; and guest professor at the School of History and Culture of Science, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Tianjin University (2018–2021).

Schäfer received her doctorate from the University of Würzburg, and her habilitation in the history of China and science. She has worked and studied at the University of Zhejiang, Beijing University, Hsinchu University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Manchester.

She won the History of Science Society: Pfizer Award in 2012, and the Association for Asian Studies' Joseph Levenson Book Prize in 2013, for her 2011 book The Crafting of the 10,000 Things (University of Chicago Press)]. She is due to be awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 2020.

Schäfer was previously the director of the Centre for Chinese Studies and held the professorial chair of Chinese Studies, both at the University of Manchester.

Selected publications

• The Crafting of the 10,000 Things (University of Chicago Press, 2011)