Thesis: The art of imperial afterlife: archtecture, art, and material culture of the western Qing tombs (working title)
Funded by AHRC/CHASE
Supervisor: Dr Stephen Whiteman
Advisor: Dr Tom Nickson
Chinese emperors are known to have spent a significant amount of time and resource designing their mausoleums. Elaborate burials sought to establish a realm in which death approximated life. Final resting places often rivalled or even surpassed the palaces the imperial families lived in. The Qing rulers were no exception, and the three imperial mausoleums in Shenyang, and east and west of Beijing, bear testimony to these grand endeavours.
Little research has been done, however, to situate these spaces and their architecture, art, and material culture within the larger canon of art historical and material culture studies of Qing China. This thesis is the first foray into this hitherto understudied, yet hugely promising field of enquiry.
Research Interests
- Chinese tomb art
- Chinese architecture, especially of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1912) dynasties
- museum formations & collections
- provenance research
Education
PhD student, The Courtauld Institute of Art (2019-present)
MA in History of Art, Persian Painting, The Courtauld Institute of Art
MA in China studies (History & Archaeology), Yenching Academy, Peking University
BA in East Asian art history (major) and China studies (minor), Freie Universität Berlin
Publications
- ‘The Typographia Sinica: The first Chinese Printing Press in Europe?,’ in Printing Things: Blocks, Plates, and Other Objects that Printed 1400–1900, Elizabeth Savage and Femke Speelberg (eds.), Proceedings of the British Academy, Oxford University Press, 2024, forthcoming.
- ‘Plündern in Pekings Peripherie’ [Plunder in Beijing’s Periphery: The Case of the Western Qing Tombs] (in German), in Ostasiatische Zeitschrift, New Series No. 46, Autumn 2023, pp. 20-35.
- ‘再探‘古玩圖’：清宮藝術品的前世與今生’ [zai tan ‘Guwantu’: Qinggong yishupin de qianshi yu jinsheng. The Pictures of Ancient Playthings revisited: Life and afterlife of a court painting] (in Chinese), in典藏 [Dian Cang /Art & Collection] No. 373, October 2023, pp. 86-93.
- ‘The Jiaqing Emperor: the underestimated emperor’, in Creators of Modern China: 100 lives from empire to republic 1796-1912, Jessica Harrison-Hall and Julia Lovell (eds.), London: Thames & Hudson with the British Museum, 2023.