Tianyuan Huang is a PhD candidate in Japanese history at Columbia University. Her research examines how gender ideologies shape the coevolution of indigenous medicine and medical science, and vice versa. From the perspective of agnotology, the study of ignorance, Tianyuan’s dissertation explores responses to women’s subjective and nonspecific health symptoms over the past two centuries of Japanese history, especially how the power dynamic between biomedicine and kanpō, the Japanese adaptation of Chinese herbal medicine, affected the enacting of enigma surrounding the female body. Tianyuan has a background in international politics and public policy, too, and has previously worked as a researcher of international human rights mechanisms and politics for an LGBTI rights organization. She now volunteers as a peer advocate for the Gay Health Advocacy Project and the Women’s Health Advocacy Project at Columbia Health.