She is trained as a historian in three countries – China (B.A. and M.A. at Peking University), USA (Ph.D. at The University of Michigan) and France (Chateaubriand Scholar at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales). Her research areas center on the social, cultural, and religious history of late imperial and modern China, with a particular emphasis on the transnational and cross-cultural studies between China and France.