I am Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature & Philosophy at the University of Bergen. My research investigates how texts, concepts, and interpretive frameworks move across languages, disciplines, and historical contexts, and how such movement transforms what can be known, read, and communicated. I work at the intersection of Chinese studies, comparative literature and philosophy, translation studies, and the history of knowledge.

The guiding principle of my inquiry is transreading, a method I have developed for reconstructing how meaning is recreated through translation, reinterpretation, mediation, and conceptual widening. Earlier stages of this research examined Chinese-European literary and philosophical encounters, including Lu Xun–Brandes–Nietzsche, Feng Zhi–Rilke–Kierkegaard, Kafka–Wilhelm–Laozi, and Olav H. Hauge–Tao Qian–Li Bai.

My current work extends this long-term research programme into the relation between science and the humanities, epitomised in QuantACT: Quantum Physicists in Contact with Ancient Chinese Texts. This project investigates an improbable but historically reconstructable encounter between quantum physics and ancient Chinese texts. It focuses on Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli, and Werner Heisenberg, and asks how mediated Chinese texts entered their intellectual horizons when quantum physics strained inherited explanatory frameworks.

QuantACT does not regard this encounter as direct influence, timeless affinity, or retrospective analogy. It reconstructs the mediation routes through which ancient Chinese texts became available and meaningful to European physicists: translations, interlocutor networks, educational formations, and broader intellectual contexts. These routes form what the project calls a mediation zone, the historically traceable field in which distant traditions become mutually intelligible.

The project’s central concern is epistemological. It approaches quantum physics not only as a scientific revolution, but also as a moment of scientific self-reflection, in which questions of observation, description, language, and communication became newly urgent. QuantACT investigates conceptual widening amid twentieth-century European and Chinese epistemic crises: how thinkers respond when inherited frameworks no longer suffice.

QuantACT moves in two directions. It asks how ancient Chinese texts became resources for physicists reflecting on the limits of scientific knowledge, and what Chinese studies may learn from the physicists’ improbable engagements with those texts. The project is therefore more than a historical reconstruction; it is a methodological inquiry into how knowledge changes across languages, disciplines, and traditions.

QuantACT integrates archival research, multilingual philology, history and philosophy of science, physics-informed conceptual review, and evidence grading through transreading. Claims are distinguished as documented transmission, source-grounded interpretation, or exploratory proposition. This framework keeps uncertainty visible and prevents contact from being confused with causality. A central component is the QuantACT Galaxy, a digital research infrastructure designed to make sources, mediation routes, conceptual relations, and evidentiary status navigable, filterable, and revisable.

I am developing QuantACT through local and global collaboration with physicists, digital researchers, archivists, visualisation specialists, and scholars in complementary humanities disciplines. Together, we investigate how human beings think when inherited frameworks fail, how mediation enables new intelligibilities, and how encounters between distant traditions can generate previously unavailable possibilities of thought.

One-minute video intro to my 2026 publication in the Journal of Science and Literature: https://youtu.be/lefbQF28bAk

Select publications:

“Constellations of Complementarity: Niels Bohr’s Transreading of Chinese Classics,” Migrating Minds, Volume 4, Issue 1, May 2026.

https://migratingminds.georgetown.edu/issues/volume-1-issue-4-spring-2026/

“Transreading the Resonance between Science, Philosophy, and Poetry,” Journal of Literature and Science, Volume 18, Issue 2, April 2026.

https://www.literatureandscience.org/volume-18-issue-2-2025/

“Når diktet åpner seg. Hauge og Tao Qian kryper inn,” Salongen, nettidsskrift for filosofi og idéhistorie, March 2026.

https://www.salongen.no/essay/nar-diktet-apner-seg-hauge-og-tao-qian-kryper-inn/261512

“Cracking ‘A Hard Nut’: How Kafka and Hauge Transread Laozi,” Poetica 56.1-2: 93-139. June 2025.

https://doi.org/10.30965/25890530-05534010

Hei! Jeg er transleser mellom kinesisk og germansk poesi og filosofi, som oppdaget en gullgruve i norsk og nordisk kultur etter å ha kommet fra USA til Norge i 2021. Det er først etter å ha reist rundt i verden og opplevd så mange forskjellige kulturer at du kan bli klar over både røttene dine og kallet ditt, og hvor du egentlig hører hjemme. Jeg har røtter i Kina, Tyskland og USA, men jeg hører hjemme i Norge.

Siste intervjuer:

1. Portrettintervju, «Huiwen (Helen) Zhang: Ekte kosmopolitt og hekta på Hauge», juni 2022: 

   https://www.uib.no/hf/154625/huiwen-helen-zhang-ekte-kosmopolitt-og-hekta-p%C3%A5-hauge

2. Velkommen inn i slangens år: Studvest, February 2025.

   https://www.studvest.no/kultur/velkommen-inn-i-slangens-ar/158741

3. Fem kjappe til Asia-eksperten: Huiwen Helen Zhang, Jan 2024, published online via Asianettverket:

   https://www.sum.uio.no/forskning/nettverk/asianettverket/aktuelle-saker/fem-kjappe-til-asia-eksperten-huiwen-helen-zhang.html

Created and taught over thirty courses in comparative literature, philosophy, religion, history, politics, cinema, popular culture, social media, creative writing, and journalism:

1.    Modernity and Its Discontents: Scandinavia—Germany—Japan—China [Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2018, Spring 2017, Fall 2015, Fall 2014]
2.    Transreading for Creative Writing [Fall 2020]
3.    Tradition and Revolution [Fall 2020, Fall 2017]
4.    Critical Thinking and Language Innovation [Spring 2020, Spring 2018]
5.    Critique via Social Media [Spring 2020, Spring 2017]
6.    Modern Europe Transreads China: Alternative Solutions for 20th-Century Issues [Fall 2019]
7.    Contemplative Cinema [Fall 2019, Spring 2016]
8.    Kafka and Daoist Philosophy [Summer 2019]
9.    Poet—Warrior—Philosopher [Spring 2019]
10.    Critique via Popular Music [Spring 2019]
11.    Transreading across Genres [Fall 2018]
12.    Anatomy of “Breaking News” [Fall 2018]
13.    Voicing Sentiments [Spring 2018]
14.    Transreading Literature as History [Fall 2017]
15.    Philosophy in Literature [Spring 2017]
16.    Transreading Prose Poetry [Spring 2016]
17.    Cross-cultural Microblogging [Fall 2015, Spring 2015]
18.    Modern Poetry and Prose [Fall 2015, Spring 2015, Fall 2014]
19.    Untimely Meditations: A Chinese Perspective [Spring 2014]
20.    Global Cinema: The Chinese Contribution [Spring 2014]
21.    The Dilemma of Modernity: Kierkegaard to Kafka [Fall 2013]
22.    Concealment and Revelation: Transreading Lu Xun [Spring 2013]
23.    The Wanderer in Hong Kong Cinema [Fall 2012]
24.    Modernization and Its Discontents: China—Germany—Scandinavia [Fall 2012]
25.    Chinese Microblogging [Fall 2014, Fall 2013, Spring 2012]
26.    Authentic Beauty: Chinese Perspectives (1979-present) [Spring 2012]
27.    Modernization and Its Discontents: Lu Xun—Nietzsche—Georg Brandes [Fall 2011]
28.    Act it out—Chinese through Theatre [Fall 2011] 
29.    Authentic Beauty: Chinese Perspectives (1917-1978) [Fall 2013, Fall 2012, Fall 2011]
30.    The Treasure of Sorrow: China’s Lost Generation [Spring 2011]
31.    Blessed in Translation [Spring 2011] 
32.    Four Faces of the Wanderer: An Exploration of Modern Chinese Literature [Fall 2010]
33.    Nietzsche’s Superman and Daoist Philosophy [Spring 2009]

Siste publikasjoner:

“Constellations of Complementarity: Niels Bohr’s Transreading of Chinese Classics,” Migrating Minds, Volume 4, Issue 1, May 2026.

https://migratingminds.georgetown.edu/issues/volume-1-issue-4-spring-2026/

“Transreading the Resonance between Science, Philosophy, and Poetry,” Journal of Literature and Science, Volume 18, Issue 2, April 2026.

https://www.literatureandscience.org/volume-18-issue-2-2025/

“Når diktet åpner seg. Hauge og Tao Qian kryper inn,” Salongen, nettidsskrift for filosofi og idéhistorie, March 2026.

https://www.salongen.no/essay/nar-diktet-apner-seg-hauge-og-tao-qian-kryper-inn/261512

“Cracking ‘A Hard Nut’: How Kafka and Hauge Transread Laozi,” Poetica 56.1-2 (open-access): 93-139. June 2025.

https://doi.org/10.30965/25890530-05534010

“A Perfect Bliss-Potential Realized: Transreading ‘Wish, to Become Indian’ in Light of Kafka’s Dao” https://doi.org/10.1111/oli.12289

“Transreading in the Nordic Mode: Olav H. Hauge in Dialogue with Laozi and Eckhart” https://doi.org/10.57928/vr7q-cm21

“Richard Wilhelm and Alfred Döblin Transread the Chinese Tradition” https://doi.org/10.4312/as.2024.12.2.13-41 

War and Chinese Culture

Upon the Eagle-Mound: Hauge’s Cathay

Transreading across Cultures: American Students Decipher a Modern Chinese Classic

Applying Transreading in Teaching Literaturphilosophie: Laozi, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Olav H. Hauge

Siste presentasjoner:

«Olav H. Hauges boksamling og nordisk translesing», Manuslokking: Boksamlingas forteljingar, Seminar i Aasentunet i Ørsta, October 17–18, 2024.

„Das deutsche Daodejing? Kafkas Geduldspiel mit Laozi“, University of Rostock, June 20, 2024.

«Kafkas Dao: ein Geduldspiel mit Laozi, Goethe und Nietzsche. Ein Transreading-Workshop mit Prof. Dr. Huiwen Zhang». Eine Zusammenarbeit zwischen DIMAS und dem Lehrstuhl für theologische Philosophie, University of Regensburg, May 24, 2024.

«Å se» Hauges gestalt med Laozi, Heraklit, Blake, Emerson, Whitehead og Kafka: Filosofi ved poesi, fra paradokser til aforismer (Bergen, april 2024)

Å knekke ‘en hard nøtt’: Kafkas og Hauges translesing av Laozi (Bergen, des 2023)

Reach for the Highest: Transreading Laozi and Eckhart through Olav H. Hauge (Aarhus, oct 2023)

Sidan har ingen spurt etter ferskenblomekjelda? Olav H. Hauge transleser T’ao Ch’ien (Haugesenteret Ulvik, sep 2023)

A German-Jewish Outsider: Alfred Döblin Transreads Laozi, Liezi & Confucius, European Association for Chinese Philosophy Conference “Interpretation and Reinvention” (Macerata, jun 2023)

Kafka’s Dao: The Patience Game, University of Chicago Center in Paris Symposium, “Translation and the Irreducible Plurality of Languages” (Paris, april 2023)

Slik talte de norske taoistene Olav H. Hauge og Jan Erik Vold: Amund Børdahl og Jørgen Sejersted i samtale med Helen Zhang om filosofi og poesi (Bergen, jan 2023)

Transreading the Limits of Knowledge: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (Hannover keynote, nov 2022)

Olav H. Hauge transleser Laozi: Gammel kinesisk litteraturfilosofi i moderne norsk poesi (Bergen, nov 2022)

Transreading Chinese Literature as World Literature (Bergen paneldebatt, mai 2022)

Dao—‘the strongest ferment for the newer European literature’ (Bergen paneldeatt, nov 2021)

Digital Transreading: Revitalising the Canon

I founded this multilingual digital-humanities initiative in 2020 and lead its research with long-term collaborators in Norway, Germany, the UK, and the US. We ask how canonical texts acquire new meanings as they migrate across languages, periods, media, and intellectual traditions.

Within shared digital research environments, we bring together manuscripts, translations, annotations, images, audio readings, and comparative source relationships. Digital Transreading makes visible the textual encounters through which works are revised, interpreted, and renewed. 

This initiative encompasses three projects:

• Franz Kafka: Kafka’s Zürau Collection and Associated Reflections connects Kafka’s aphorisms and manuscript revisions with translations, associated writings, European philosophy, and ancient Chinese texts. Its card-based structure enables comparison across individual passages and thematic constellations.
• Olav H. Hauge: Olav H. Hauge and His Web of Collages maps Hauge’s poetry, journals, marginalia, and translations in relation to Chinese, Nordic, and European sources. Collaborative annotation and audio readings illuminate how Hauge transformed inherited materials into new poetic forms.
• Lu Xun: Lu Xun’s Wild Grass and Related Classical Poems traces textual and conceptual connections among Lu Xun’s prose poetry, classical Chinese poems, multilingual translations, images, and later interpretations.

Digital Transreading extends my research method into a collaborative digital environment. Its organisation of linked sources and interpretations lays the foundation for QuantACT, which advances this approach through source-critical archival reconstruction, evidence-graded digital Constellations, and the integrated QuantACT Galaxy.