Jingyi Zhou is a PhD candidate at ISAW specializing in the art and archaeology of East Asia. Her dissertation examines the exile and diaspora experiences of the Tuyuhun royal family in Tang China (618–907 CE).
Trained as an archaeologist at Wuhan University, she has extensive fieldwork experience across China, including work on settlements, urban fortifications, tombs, and kiln sites. While broadly engaged with various aspects of Early Medieval China, her research on Buddhist art deepened during her work in Sichuan, where she focused on Buddhist relief sculptures near Chengdu for her thesis. She earned her Master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where she expanded her expertise in sinology, art history, philology, and paleography in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations. There, she further developed her research on the material culture of the Xianbei nomadic group.
At ISAW, Jingyi has participated in excavations and surveys in Central Asia while continuing archaeological projects in China. She has also been involved in undergraduate teaching, leading discussions in courses such as East Asian Art I and Silk Road and Central Asia. These experiences have further solidified her interest in multicultural dynamics and transcultural negotiations in the China–Inner Asia borderlands.