YAN Yu is an Associate Professor of Art History and Curation at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and a Visiting Scholar in the Department of History at Harvard University. She holds a PhD from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a BA from Peking University. Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the NYU Shanghai’s Center for Global Asia and the Institute of Modern History at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Her research focuses on twentieth-century inter-Asian intellectual and artistic dialogues, a line of inquiry that leads to her current monograph on modern artistic exchange between China and South Asia. Driven by academic curiosity, she has explored diverse mediums, including calligraphy, woodcut, and dance. Her research articles have appeared in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. In 2023, she curated the VR exhibition “Flowers on One Stalk: China-India Artistic Interactions in the Twentieth Century” at NYU Shanghai. Beyond her academic work, she enjoys the peaceful practices of calligraphy and theguqin, an ancient Chinese zither.

Research Interest

• Inter-Asian Artistic Interactions in the Twentieth Century
• Modern South and Southeast Asian Art History
• Global History of Chinese Calligraphy
• Digital Curation and VR/AR Interaction