Delphine Spicq is a senior lecturer with a doctorate in the history of East Asian civilizations from the Université Paris Diderot (nouvellement Paris Cité), with a thesis entitled L'hydraulique urbaine et la politique de l'eau dans la plaine du Nord de la Chine : le cas de Tianjin, 1900-1949. A sinologist and historian specializing in the history of technology and the environment, her research focuses on hydraulic conservation and administration in late imperial China and under the republic.
Since 2004, she has been in charge of the Chinese Studies Library at the Collège de France, a library specializing in pre-imperial and imperial China in classical fields such as art history, literature and philosophy, as well as ethnology, the history of science and technology, geography, law, sociology, etc.
She is also a statutory member of the China-Korea-Japan laboratory (UMR 8173) and runs a research seminar on Republican China with Xavier Paulès (see https://ccj.ehe ss.fr/membres/delphine-spicq)
She co-edits the journal Artefact, Techniques, histoire et sciences humaines (see https://journals.opene dition.org/artefact/), which specializes in the history of technology in the broadest sense.