Agnes is the Mellon postdoctoral scholar in Chinese archaeology in the Department of Classics and the Archaeology Center. She is working with Ian Morris and Walter Scheidel on the interdisciplinary project "the First Great Divergence of Europe and China, 300-800 CE." Her area of specialization is Han art and archaeology, and she is working on a book-length manuscript, based on her dissertation Pictorial Eulogies in Three Eastern Han Tombs. In this study, she examines Eastern Han geopolitics and the social history of the landed gentry, with a focus on the notion of "private histories." Prior to coming to Stanford, Agnes was the Artemis and Martha Joukowsky Fellow in Early China at Brown University from 2004-2007, where she taught courses on ancient Chinese art, Han thanatology, and the archaeology of the early Silk Road. Agnes is an academic advisor to UNESCO's World Cultural Heritage Centre; she has served on the committees for the transnational inscriptions of the Qhapag Ñan (the Main Andean Road) and the Silk Road (oasis route). Prior to pursuing her doctorate, Agnes was the Special Assistant to a former U.S. Ambassador; Agnes also holds an interdisciplinary M.A. with a focus on modern East Asian history and politics.
Research Interests Archaeology of Early Imperial China, ancient cartographic science, historical GIS (Geographical Information System), policy research on the preservation and protection of historical landscapes and cultural relics Publications "Structured Perceptions of Real and Imagined Landscapes in Early Imperial China," in Geography, Ethnography, and Perceptions of the World from Antiquity to the Renaissance, edited by Kurt Raaflaub and Richard Talbert, for the series The Ancient World: Comparative Histories, Malden, MA and Oxford. (Winter 2007/Spring 2008)"An Emic Perspective on the Mapmaker's Art in Western Han China," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 3, 17. 4 (2007), pp. 443-57"The Exceptional Universal Value of the Road Systems in Ancient Empires: A Comparative Study of the Chinese Oasis Route of the Early Silk Road and the Qhapag Ñan," UNESCO publications (2006)
