Professor Schmalzer's research focuses on social, cultural, and political aspects of the history of science in modern China. Her first book, The People's Peking Man: Popular Science and Human Identity in Twentieth-Century China, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2008. She has also published two articles on the interactions between scientific and local forms of knowledge in rural Chinese communities -- entitled "Breeding a Better China: Pigs, Practices, and Place in a Chinese County, 1929-1937" (2002) and "Fishing and Fishers in Penghu, Taiwan, 1895-1970" (2002) -- and a historiographical essay on science in socialist China entitled "On the Appropriate Use of Rose-Colored Glasses" (2007). She is currently pursuing a second book project on agricultural science in Mao-era China. Her research has been supported by fellowships from the National Science Foundation, Fulbright, and the Social Science Research Council.