Dr Yan Jia

Dr Yan Jia currently works as an Assistant Professor in the School of Arts, Peking University. She received her PhD from the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University in 2015. She works on the art of the ancient Near East, with an emphasis on the Neo-Assyrian period. She has dual BA degrees in History and Art Studies, and a MA degree in Egyptology, all from Peking University. She also studied at Cairo University for one year, focusing on Egyptian archaeology. During her PhD study, Dr Jia took the Agnes Mongan Curatorial Internship at the Harvard Art Museums, working specifically on cylinder seals. Her dissertation, defended in December 2014, is entitled 'Imperial Doors of Assyria: Monumentality, Spatiality, and Rituality of the Architectural Doors from Balawat'. Dr Jia’s current research interests, beyond the field of ancient Near Eastern art and architecture, extend also to cross-cultural comparative studies of the art of ancient Mesopotamia and China. Courses taught by Dr Jia at PKU include: Methods and Theories of Art History, Art and Architecture of the Ancient Near East, etc.