Her research focuses on the ritual art and visual culture of middle-period China (9th-14th centuries), and has worked on themes as diverse theatricality in painting, shifting roles of tomb portraits, cultural patterns of emerging local elite, temporality in tomb imageries, and new conceptions and practices of "spirit articles" in middle-period funerary art. Her research has been funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Asian Cultural Council, and, most recently, American Council of Learned Society.