Junghwan Ryoo’s research focuses on the social, cultural, and intellectual history of Middle-Period China, especially the changing role of social networks from the medieval period through the Song. Drawing on social history, historical anthropology, the history of knowledge, and the history of religion, he studies how social relationships shaped trust, credibility, and the ways claims about the world became accepted as knowledge or belief. He is also attentive to the ways literary conventions, genres, and changing textual practices—from manuscript to print culture—mediated the production and transmission of knowledge. In particular, he examines how the decline of aristocratic networks reshaped practices of verification, information transmission, and the production of authority across intellectual, religious, and social life.