UCI Associate Professor of History Emily Baum has been named a 2022-2023 fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey – one of the world's foremost centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. IAS brings together scholars from all over the world to engage in interdisciplinary collaboration for a full academic year. Fellows are selected through a highly competitive process for their bold ideas, innovative methods and deep research questions.
Research at IAS is conducted across four Schools – Historical Studies, Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Social Science – to push the boundaries of human knowledge. Past IAS members include 35 Nobel Laureates, and the site has hosted scholars ranging from Albert Einstein to Clifford Geertz.
During the fellowship, Baum will have the opportunity to pursue uninterrupted scholarly work, share her research and receive feedback from other participants in an intellectually stimulating and generative environment. She will use the time to work on her next book project, tentatively titled, Needled: How Acupuncture Became Alternative.
“My next book looks at the history of acupuncture as it circulated from China to the United States starting in the 1970s,” said Baum. “It bridges modern Chinese history, global and transnational history and the history of medicine to trace the process by which acupuncture was transformed from a relatively unknown medical procedure in the first half of the twentieth century to one of the most popular ‘complementary and alternative medicine’ techniques by the end of the century.”