I gained a Master degree in Museums Management from City University, London in 2005. My dissertation, entitled Digital Preservation and the Life Cycle Management of Digital Collections, focussed on the preservation of digital assets and the economics of digital preservation policies in public non-profit organisations. Previously I gained a degree in Conservation at Camberwell College of Arts.
I joined IDP in 2001 working as a conservator on the Stein collection. Conserving such a rich and complex set of material gave me the opportunity to understand and get to know the collection intimately. During my tenure as conservator I investigated the use of coating substances on scrolls and their effect on the preservation and conservation of this type of objects. Furthermore I have been looking at consolidation methods using both traditional and non-traditional techniques including the use of aerosols.
In 2006 I became IDP European Project Coordinator. Currently I am involved with research on the negative effects of organic volatile emissions from wood used in storage cabinets. I have also been writing a conservation glossary to be translated in all the languages of IDP. The glossary is intended as a tool to facilitate communication and exchanges between people from different countries involved with the conservation of Central Asian collections.
I completed my PhD at the University of California at Berkeley in 2002 where my main line of research was early Chinese orthography. My dissertation was published in 2006 by ELTE University, Hungary under the title Orthography of Early Chinese Writing: Evidence from Newly Excavated Texts. See here for further information
Immediately after graduation I joined IDP, working as Overseas Project Manager overseeing IDP's work in China, Japan and Russia. In the meantime, I have continued my work on Chinese manuscripts and palaeography, gradually moving from the pre-Qin period towards mediaeval times, as a result of being able to have direct access to the Dunhuang manuscripts.
While working with Dunhuang manuscripts, I applied a software tool I had developed earlier for segmenting manuscript scans into small images of individual characters. Although initially designed for bamboo slip documents from early China, the technology and the approach worked even better for the Dunhuang corpus, enabling me to analyze the orthography of character forms from different periods. My principal interest lay in studying palaeography on the level of the entire corpus, working with a statistically significant amount of data.
This approach eventually was channeled into the Leverhulme Palaeography Project. Since 2005 my research has concentrated on the palaeographical and codicological aspects of Chinese manuscripts from Dunhuang. My most recent research has been on mediaeval scribal habits seen in the light of how copyists and editors corrected mistakes in the manuscripts. I have also been working on Chinese seals in Ireland and on Count Otani.
I completed an MA in Sinology at The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, in 2004, and am now working towards a PhD at SOAS where I am registered part-time. The topic is the representation of history in contemporary Chinese fiction.
I began work at IDP in 2003 as Digitistation and Networking Coordinator. During this time I prepared an educational resource for Chinese primary schoolteachers on the history of Dunhuang and Silk Road myths and legends. The resource was part of the EU-China funded Gansu Basic Education Project and contained sound and video clips. It was distributed to one thousand primary schoolteachers in remote areas of Gansu province, China. Click here to see the online version of The Story of Dunhuang, Gansu
I became Overseas Project Coordinator in 2006 overseeing work at the IDP centres in China and Russia. I am project coordinator for the project China-India-Russia 2006–2008: Bringing Together Scholars, Scholarship and Scholarly Resources on the Silk Road funded by the Ford Foundation. This project aims to build resources for Silk Road scholarship by focusing on hitherto neglected collections held in Russia, China and India and by organising three symposia, one in each country, over two years. The symposia provide an excellent opportunity for scholars from these three countries to meet and exchange ideas. Topics treated so far include the transmission of the Suvarṇaprabhāsottamasūtra and Chinese and Tibetan influences on Tangut art and religion, with particular reference to esoteric Buddhism. The project also trains young scholars from the three countries in research methods, image management, cataloguing, conference-organisation and production of web resources.
I co-edited Tradition and Innovation: proceedings of the 6th IDP conservation conference with Lin Shitian of IDP China, published Spring 2007. See here for further information
In 2004–5 I taught Chinese to primary school children at the Chinese Learning Centre in Belgravia.
In 2005–6 I taught translation from Chinese to English at SOAS for the 'MA in Theory and Practice of Translation'.
I have given several papers at conferences on behalf of IDP.
I completed my PhD at the University of Manchester in 2000. The doctorate centred on translations of 11 Great Perfection (Dzogchen) texts by the 18th century master Jigme Lingpa. It was published by Wisdom in 2003 as Approaching the Great Perfection: Simultaneous and Gradual Methods of Enlightenment in Dzogchen (available to order from Wisdom Publications).
I joined IDP in 1999. In the beginning I worked on the Tibetan wooden slips from Miran and Mazar-Tagh in a joint project with Tsuguhito Takeuchi. In 2001 I began to work with Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang, providing new numbers and basic catalogue information for the manuscripts not catalogued by Louis de la Vallée Poussin (IOL Tib J 766 to 1774). From 2002 to 2005 I worked as a researcher on the AHRC Tibetan Tantric Manuscript Cataloguing Project. One of the outcomes of the AHRC project was a growing appreciation of the importance of palaeography to understanding the Dunhuang manuscripts. I worked with Jacob Dalton and forensic handwriting expert Tom Davis (Birmingham University) on identifying the handwritings of individual scribes. The results of this research were published in the article 'Beyond Anonymity'. This work led into the Leverhulme Palaeography Project.
Since 2005 my research has concentrated upon the palaeographical and codicological aspects of the Tibetan Dunhuang manuscripts. My most recent research has been on the question of the source of the Tibetan script.
Since 2004 I have taught undergraduate and postgraduate level courses at SOAS, including 'Tibetan Buddhism' and 'The Buddhist Conquest of Central Asia'.
I regularly give papers at conferences worldwide.
Since 2000 I have published papers on subjects including the early Great Perfection, the early cult of Avalokiteśvara, the tantric samaya vows, and oral transmission.
I also publish two weblogs:
Early Tibet
Reading Tibetan Manuscripts
I completed my PhD in Chinese at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, on historiography entitled Politics Against the Pen.
Over the past decade I have been working on the following topics, using the Silk Road manuscripts and artefacts as the basis for much of this research.
Silk Road History, specifically 1st millennium social history, resulting in the publication of Life Along the Silk Road. I am now working on a history of the Taklamakan kingdoms.
Chinese Historiography, specifically in relation to the narrative of its relations with the 'Western Regions' and the concept of 'Chineseness' or 'Han'.
Manuscript Studies, specifically the codiocology of Chinese manuscripts from Dunhuang, most recently as part of the Leverhulme Palaeographical Project.
Forgeries: this has long been an interest and, in 200 I organised a conference on Dunhuang Manuscript Forgeries, resulting in a publication of the same name.
Censorship. I have written widely on this, including the Chinese and other subject entries in the Encyclopedia of Censorship and an article on Chinese almanacs and censorship in Tang China.
I give numerous lectures each year to a variety of audiences worldwide, including schoolchildren, university students, academic conference participants and members of the general public.
In 2004 I curated the British Library major sunmer exhibition, 'The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith'.
In 2007 I curated a small exhibition at the John Rylands Library, Manchester, 'The Secrets of the Silk Road.'
Is there a Silk Road?: Hosted by the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL.