Haiying Hou obtained her doctoral degree in Asian Studies from the University of Auckland in 2021. She continued working at the University of Auckland as a Professional Teaching Fellow and Postdoctoral Researcher from 2021 to 2022, and then joined Shanghai Normal University in 2023. She also worked as a visiting researcher at Sophia University founded by the Japan Foundation from 2017 to 2018. 

Her research focuses on examining the relationships between women, health, and the state in pre-war Japan, with particular emphasis on the writings of Yoshioka Yayoi, the founder of Tokyo Women's Medical University. Her research interests also include the history of women's health and women's popular magazines in modern Japan, as well as women's medical education exchanges between China and Japan before World War II.

Hou, Haiying. “Resilient Paths: Opportunities and Challenges for Chinese Women Doctors Trained in Imperial Japan.” In Medical Women in the Japanese Empire: Sources and Critique, edited by Fujimoto Hito, Aya Homei and Ellen Gardner Nakamura. Routledge, 2025 (forthcoming)

Hou, Haiying. “Protecting the health and welfare of Japanese women: Yoshioka Yayoi and her visit to Nazi Germany in 1939. ” Women’s History Review (2024): 1-19. 

Hou, Haiying, and Ellen Gardner Nakamura. ““Can Respectable People Also Be Infected with Gonorrhea?”: Questions to a Japanese Women’s Magazine in the Interwar Period.” East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 17, no. 3 (2023): 307-328. 

Hou, Haiying. “A Re-examination of Birth Control in the First Half of Twentieth Century Japan: Yoshioka Yayoi’s Anti-birth Control Position.” The History of the Family 27, no. 2 (2022): 391-409. 

Member of the Association for Asian Studies