I joined the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow in January 2019. I teach with Special Collections and Global History Hackathons and run research projects in the history of European colonialism and decolonisation from a global vantage point.

I have almost two decades of experience researching changing economic, social, and political dynamics and global and imperial interconnections in Africa and the Middle East ca. 1800-present. I hold PhD and MA degrees in History/History of Science from Princeton University (2014 and 2010), a diploma in Arabic language and culture from the American University in Cairo (2008), an AM degree in Regional Studies-Middle East from Harvard University (2005), and a BA Honours in Modern History from the University of Oxford (2002). I have lived and studied in Algeria, Egypt, France, Lebanon, Morocco, and the United States.

Prior to taking up my current post, I was a fixed-term Departmental and College Lecturer in Modern European and World History at the University of Oxford (2014-2017) and Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in History at the University of Glasgow (2017-2018). I also worked at Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies (2005-2007).

I am writing the history of global dynamics of health and social welfare, cross-cultural translations of knowledge and professional categories, organizational study of science and bureaucracy, technology transfer, and epidemics. 

My past, current and future research focuses on Africa in its Islamic, European, and global contexts ca. 1800-present, with a particular focus on Algeria.

Sources

I bring a specialist focus on neglected archives and Arabic-language sources from Algeria, France, Morocco, the UK, and US, to bear on a field that has prioritised sources in European languages. This allows me to document and understand long-term local, regional and transregional trends that have been invisible to other scholars. It also importantly enhances my ability to amplify the voices of populations who have been difficult to find in the archives. 

Methods

I focus on the everyday work required to produce and maintain colonial political and economic dominance in twentieth-century Algeria. One way I do this is by piecing together the quotidian bureaucratic procedures, forms of accounting, and managerial tracking systems which were supposed to give the colonial state control both over disease and its employees.

Interdisciplinarity

My research marries insights from Global and Imperial History, History of Medicine, History of Public Health, Media Studies, Surveillance Studies, and Science & Technology Studies. This allows me to offer a new way of looking at the role of "race" and attitudes to religion—Islam in particular—in two major entwined shifts: the medicalisation of welfare and the evolution of the modern bureaucratic state.

List by: Type | Date

I have been very fortunate to have had my research thus far supported by prestigious awards, grants and fellowships from institutions such as the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Leverhulme Trust, The Royal Society of Edinburgh, and The Maurice Amado Foundation.

I am currently Co-Investigator on the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) funded project, Constructing African Medical Heritage, with scholar of History and Law Professor Helen Tilley (PI, Northwestern University) and Dr Michael Afoláyan (Co-I, independent scholar, Nigeria). As part of this project, we are working towards a collaborative publication on history and research methods in African medical heritage and material cultures.

I would love to hear from prospective students of African history, global history of science, medicine, and health, and Middle East history.

• Chou, Jean Tzu-Yin
  Local mobility, medical management, and the founding of hospitals by the Chinese communities in the Straits-Settlements-era Singapore, circa. 1826-1942

I currently supervise the following doctoral projects:

• Dr Kenneth Collins, “An Oral History Study with Patients and Staff in the Midlock Medical Centre, Ibrox, Glasgow 1989-1992” 
• Jean Tzu-Yin Chou, “Ethnic politics, local mobility, and medical management in Singapore under British Colonisation and Japanese Occupation"
• Ayodele Ige, “Medical Pluralism and Epistemic Contestation in Colonial Nigeria"
• [External committee member] Mayan Lalush, “Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Algeria under French Colonialism, 1900-1954"

I recently supervised the following undergraduate dissertation projects:

• "An Examination of the 200-year Relationship between Bahrain and Britain with a focus on the Contributions of the British Council in establishing a Modern Educational System in Bahrain 1930 – 1968."
• "Dr Georges Burou, Gender Confirmation Surgery and the Circumstances that his Surgery emerged in"
• "Racial and Colonial Hierarchies at the (Yellow Fever and Later East African Virus) Research Institute, Uganda – 1942-1962"
• "Women’s Participation in Scottish Medicine and Surgery: An Examination of Women’s Need to Create Their Own Spaces to Thrive in the Medical Profession"

Current teaching

I run "Global History Hackathons" for students across the university. 

I contribute teaching at all levels of the Economic and Social History subject area, including:

• Lectures on Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia for ESH Level 1
• Honours teaching "Science, Technology and Medicine in the Modern Middle East" 
• Middle East-related seminars for MSc "Business in the Global Economy" and "Globalised Economy"
• MSc teaching for "History of Medicine before 1850" and "History of Medicine 1850-2000"
• "Innovation in the Middle East and North Africa" for MInt Global Markets, Local Creativities and MSc Global Economy

Past teaching 

• Historical methods and historiography
• Imperial and Global History, 1750-1914  
• The Cold War
• The Middle East in the Age of Empire, 1830-1971  
• Science in the Modern World