Professor H. H. Kang grew up in Guatemala City, Guatemala. After completing secondary school there, he studied at Emory University and Harvard University, where he earned his Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages. He joined the WashU faculty in 2021 as Assistant Professor of East Asian Language and Cultures, from Johns Hopkins University where he held a D. Kim Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of the History of Science and Technology in 2020–21.

Kang’s first book, under contract with the University of Chicago Press, examines how artisans and “ingeniators” (leaders of artisans) shaped a vibrant culture of material design and knowledge-making in partnership with the Chosŏn Korean (1392–1910) state. His research on this subject has received international awards including the 2021 International Committee on the History of Technology Turriano Prize and the 2021 International Council of Asia Scholars Book Prize (English—Best Dissertation in the Humanities).

Kang is in the early stages of writing two other books on Korean science. Working Wisdom examines eighteenth-century army men, rustic scholars, and noblewomen who contributed to a practical turn in Korean learning, by translating foreign knowledge into “everyday technologies” ranging from cooking and husbandry to medicine and magic. Mr. Five Continents centers Yi Kyugyŏng (1788–1856), a rustic bibliophile whose works were written under his style name “Five Continents,” embodying his ambition to master global science and technology from his provincial study on the eve of high imperialism.

Kang maintains wide-ranging research and teaching interests in early modern science and technology, material culture studies, digital humanities, and global history. His works have appeared in Isis, History and Technology, Journal of World History, Journal of Cultural Analytics, and Journal of Asian Studies, among others.

Kang was an American Council of Learned Societies Fellow in 2023–24. He is currently serving as co-chair of the Forum for the History of Science in Asia at the History of Science Society. East Asian Languages and Cultures