Peter Bo Zhang
I study how institutions shape our relationships with animals, environments, and emerging technologies. My work examines the strange ways law, science, and technology define living things—and what those definitions make possible or impossible.
I am trained in history at the University of Cambridge and law at the University of Toronto, where I am a Junior Fellow of Massey College.
Research
The Infrastructure of Immunity: Animals and Epidemic Response in Qing China, 1720–1880
Social History of Medicine · forthcoming
Constructive Scienter: An Animal-Law Answer to the AI Responsibility Gap
Law, Innovation and Technology · forthcoming
Urban Pollution and Contagious Diseases in Jiangnan, 1850–1900
China’s Environmental History: A Reader · Columbia University Press · 2027
Animals and the Relational Life of Law: Indigenous Legal Traditions and Contemporary Stray Animal Governance
International Handbook of Legal Language and Communication · Springer Nature · 2026
Writing
Literary nonfiction
Counting Fish is a Kind of Prayer,
PRISM international
Internal Notes on Acceptable Dishes,
Food&
Op-eds
动物弃养应如何破题 《财新》
流浪动物照料者为何受罚 《财新周刊》
Speaking
On animals
中国民间动保行动的突围与涟漪
端传媒
Animals, Pollution, and Epidemics in Early Modern China
University of St. Andrews
·
Durham University
·
York University
·
University of Cambridge
A Conversation with PETA
Vision Shapers Forum
·
McGill University
On emerging technologies
Neither Person nor Thing: Algorithmic Accountability, Nonhuman Governance, and Constitutional Politics of TechnoPower
Society for Social Studies of Science
Reflections on Rewriting Harvard College v. Canada (Commissioner of Patents)
Animal Law & Advocacy Conference
On law
The Living Corpus of Indigenous Harvest Rights
University of Toronto
·
Massey College
Fireside Chat with the Rt. Hon. Beverley McLachlin, Former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada
Massey College
Legal Consciousness and Realpolitik in Early Imperial China
University of Cambridge
·
McGill University
·
International Society for Chinese Law & Society