She completed her Ph.D. study in East Asian art history at Heidelberg University in Germany in 2012. Her dissertation focuses on the representation of Mao Zedong in the early People’s Republic of China and examines how Mao’s portrait as the nation’s leader was constructed and what such images suggest about the Chinese artists’ experience during the Communist takeover of the country. She has been teaching Asian art in Connecticut since 2013 and was awarded a postdoctorial fellowship for the exhibition “Postwar – Art between the Pacific and Atlantic 1945-1965” in Haus der Kunst, Munich during the academic year 2014-2015.