Matthias Schumann

I graduated with an MA in Chinese Studies and History from the University of Heidelberg in 2011 before pursuing my PhD with a thesis on “spirit-writing” (Chin. fuji 扶乩/ fuluan扶鸞) in Republican China at the Heidelberg Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context.” In the following years, I held positions as scientific coordinator and postdoctoral research fellow at the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg respectively. In my research, I have mostly been working on the intersections between religion, social activism and intellectual history in late imperial and Republican China.

My current research investigates the transformation of human-animal relations in early twentieth century Shanghai (1900–1949). Being the centre of the Chinese publishing market and harbouring a multi-ethnic community of residents, Shanghai provided a “contact zone” for different actors to negotiate the understanding and place of animals in the city. In the 1930s, it thus became the home of a Buddhist animal protection movement, which saw the human mistreatment of animals as one major reason for China’s social and political crises. Due to the foreign concessions and the Japanese occupation in 1937, Shanghai also experienced different political regimes, which – in their own distinct ways – sought to regulate, centralize and exhibit animals in an attempt to create a modern and hygienic city. This project seeks to come to terms with the often contradictory views of nonhuman animals at the time and understand how they impacted their symbolical representation and their physical lives.

• “The Eradication of Stray Dogs: Debating Animal Killing in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Shanghai,” presentation at the workshop “Worldmaking and Ecological Justice,” Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich (July 11, 2025).
• “Animal Welfare and Social Mobilization: The Buddhist Animal Protection Movement in Republican China,” virtual lecture at Lingnan University, Hong Kong (November 18, 2024).
• “Between Animal Welfare and Human Salvation: Changing Buddhist Animal Release Practices in Republican Shanghai,” public lecture at the Institute for Chinese Studies, Tübingen University (June 18, 2024).
• “Der Schutz von Lebewesen (husheng 護生): Globaler Tierschutz und die Transformation buddhistischer Ethik während der Republikzeit,” presentation at the 32nd annual conference of the Deutsche Vereinigung für Chinastudien (German Association of Chinese Studies), University of Kiel (December 10, 2022).
• “One Dao Pervading Them All? The Role of the Xiantiandao Tradition among Redemptive Societies,” presentation as part of the panel “White, Green, and No Lotuses: Xiantiandao and the Question of Unities and Diversities in Chinese Sectarianism in Late Imperial and Modern China,” Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, online and in San Antonio, Texas, USA (November 21, 2021).

Books 

• Struggling for Legitimacy: Spirit-Writing and Redemptive Societies in Republican China. Revised doctoral dissertation. Leiden: Brill, forthcoming 2026.
• (co-edited with Elena Valussi) Communicating with the Gods:Spirit-Writing in Chinese History and Society. Leiden: Brill, 2023.
• (co-edited with Iwo Amelung, Moritz Bälz, Heike Holbig, and Cornelia Storz) Protecting the Weak in East Asia: Framing Mobilisation and Institutionalisation. London: Routledge, 2018.

Articles and Book Chapters (selection)

• “Der Schutz von Lebewesen (husheng 護生): Globaler Tierschutz und die Reform buddhistischer Ethik während der Republikzeit.” In Nachhaltigkeit: Chinas Umgang mit Umwelt und Nachwelt in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Jahrbuch der Deutschen Vereinigung für Chinastudien), edited by Angelika Messner and Lena Liefke. Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing (forthcoming).
• (co-written with Nikolas Broy) “Introduction.” In “Between Religious Self-Cultivation and Environmentalism: The Changing Meanings of Vegetarianism in Modern China.” Special issue, Twentieth-Century China 49, no. 3 (2024): 171–87.
• “Reasserting the Buddhist Tradition: Lü Bicheng and Chinese Vegetarianism in a Global Context.” In “Between Religious Self-Cultivation and Environmentalism: Changing Meanings of Vegetarianism in Modern China.” Special issue, Twentieth-Century China 49, no. 3 (2024): 211–32.
• “‘Protecting the Dao and Transmitting the Classics’: The New Religion to Save the World and the Confucian Dimension of Spirit-Writing in Republican China.” In Communicating with the Gods, edited by Schumann and Valussi. Leiden: Brill, 2023, 355–401.
• “‘For the Sake of Morality and Civilization’: The Buddhist Animal Protection Movement in Republican China.” Twentieth-Century China 46, no. 1 (2021): 22–40.
• “Redemptive Societies.” In Handbook on Religion in China, edited by Stephan Feuchtwang, 184–212. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020.
• “Science and Spirit-Writing: The Shanghai Lingxuehui 靈學會 and the Changing Fate of Spiritualism in Republican China.” In Text and Context in the Modern History of Chinese Religions: Redemptive Societies and Their Sacred Texts, edited by Philip Clart, David Ownby, and Chien-chuan Wang, 126–172. Leiden: Brill, 2020.

Special Issues

• (co-edited with Tanja Granzow und Jacqueline Lorenzen) “Creating the ‘Good Life’ in the City: Rethinking Urban Spaces from More-Than-Human Perspectives.” Special issue, Global Environment 18, 2 (2025).
• (co-edited with Nikolas Broy) “Between Religious Self-Cultivation and Environmentalism: Changing Meanings of Vegetarianism in Modern China.” Special issue, Twentieth-Century China 49, no. 3 (2024).

• Worldmaking—(Re)Thinking and Doing Futures

  https://www.zo.uni-heidelberg.de/de/china/arbeitsbereiche/kunst-musik-literatur/worldmaking