Wayne Soon is an Associate Professor in the Program of the History of Medicine in the Department of Surgery and the Program of History of Science, Medicine, and Technology. Dr. Soon is a historian of medicine as well as modern China and Taiwan, with an interest in how international ideas and practices of medicine, institutional building, and diaspora have shaped Chinese East Asia’s interaction with its people and the world in the twentieth century. His book, Global Medicine in China: A Diasporic History (Stanford University Press, 2020), tells the global health history of Chinese East Asia through the lens of diasporic Chinese medical personnel, who were central in introducing new practices of military medicine, blood banking, mobile medicine, and mass medical training to China and Taiwan. Universal care, practical medical education, and mobile medicine are all lasting legacies of this effort on both sides of the Taiwan Straits.
His current research projects centers around the history of health insurance and medical practices in postwar China and Taiwan and the transpacific history of SARS and COVID-19. He is also the editor for a forthcoming special issue in the East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal entitled “Biogeopolitics of Health Insurance in East and Southeast Asia.”
Dr. Soon is a frequent contributor to The Diplomat, a Washington D.C. based current affairs magazine. He has also published scholarly articles in Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Twentieth Century China, American Journal of Chinese Studies, and East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal.
He teaches courses on the history of modern medicine, the history of medicine and society in China and East Asia as well as the history of global health and medicine.
