Jinchao Zhao is an art historian specializing in visuality, materiality, and transculturality in early medieval Chinese Buddhist art.
She received her M.A. in Comparative Literature at Peking University, and obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in art and architectural history. Her dissertation investigates the Chinese reception and appropriation of the Buddhist stupa worship in early medieval China by examining stupa and pagoda imagery. Her other research interests include Buddhist visual narratives and their interaction with textual traditions, early Indian art, and miniature painting.

Jinchao has published research articles, translations, and book reviews in both English and Chinese. Her recent article, entitled “Generating Sacred Space beyond Architecture: Miniature Pagodas in Early Medieval China,” has been published in MDPI: Religions.

She has also contributed a book chapter on the pictorial program on sixth-century miniature pagodas to the edited volume, Tradition, Transmission, and Transformation: Perspectives on East Asian Buddhist Art (Vernon Press, forthcoming). She is currently revising her dissertation into a book manuscript, and unfolding her second research project on the imagery of ascetic monk in early medieval China.