ZHANG Shouan was born in Taiwan in 1951. She is a member of the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica. She received her bachelor’s degree from the Department of Chinese in 1974, and master’s degree from the Institute of Chinese in 1977 at National Taiwan University. She graduated from the School of Chinese at the University of Hong Kong with doctorate in 1986. She taught at Wellesley College, Rutgers University and Seton Hall University in the United States. She was also a visiting professor of the Department of History at Yale University, the Harvard-Yenching Institute, the Department of Language and Translation at City University of Hong Kong, University of Macau, Tokyo University and Tsinghua University. Her research focuses on the academic intellectural history in Ming and Qing Dynasty, ritual study and the knowledge transformation in modern China.