Chang-Xue Shu is a historian and conservator with a background in architecture, urban studies, and history of science and technology. She works on uncovering historical legacy at the intersection of intellectual spheres and physical environments with a focus on the 19th and 20th century engineering knowledge and practice in China and beyond in the globalized world. She combines historical, laboratory, and digital methods to visit the complex interplay between nature and culture as embodied in the built environment.

With a PhD in Preservation of Architectural Heritage (Polytechnical University of Milan 2013), Changxue has a high interest in advancing dialogues between the disciplines of architecture and history of science. Since 2014, she has developed research projects “Fired Clay in Built Environment: The Western Heritage in China”, “Mineral Building Materials in China: Rediscovering Built Environment in the Large Datasets of Local Gazetteers, 10-20th Centuries”, and “Brick: Changing Technology of Ceramics”. Her research received support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), Needham Research Institute – University of Cambridge, Paul Getty Foundation, the National Research Council of Italy – Institute for Conservation and Valorization of Cultural Heritage (CNR-ICVBC / ISPC), Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and the Society for the History of Technology, among others. Some outcomes are printed in Technology and Culture, Journal of History of Science and Technology, Construction History, Construction and Building Materials, Mapping Landscapes in Transformation, along with others. Currently she undertakes two projects addressing engineering culture.

Between 2017 and 2023, Changxue joined KU Leuven as a MSCA postdoctoral fellow, with triple affiliations to the university’s Department of Architecture, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and Raymond Lemaire International Centre for Conservation. Her teaching activities were located in the doctoral training in Arenberg Doctoral School for Science, Engineering and Technology, the trans-departmental Master-after-Master program “Conservation of Monuments and Sites”, and the Master of Architectural Engineering and Master of Architecture programs. These included thesis coaching and evaluation (doctoral and master’s levels), curriculum reform and course development, and integrated studios.

Changxue has practiced in World Heritage sites, national and local monuments but also uncharted historical sites in China and Europe, firstly as an architect, planner and surveyor, and later as a conservator, conservation scientist, historian and educator over the last two decades. In ICOMOS, as a member of the International Scientific Committee for Stone and the SDG Working Group, she has co-initiated a project with the aim of bridging the gap between the expert knowledge of stone conservation and the issue of sustainability. She is also a scientific committee member in International Congress on Construction History (6ICCH, 7ICCH, 8ICCH) and a member of the History of Science Society, along with other roles of scientific societies and responsibilities for commissions of trust.