Yang Liao

LIAO Yang is a research professor at the Institute of Ethnology & Anthropology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She received her MA and PhD degree at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, in Comparison & Communication between Chinese and Western Art, and Buddhist Art History respectively.

Most of her research projects have focused on 1) Buddhist Art History, and 2) Cultural Communications between different regions and different ethnic groups as reflected by visual art remains. She has conducted field investigations of many Buddhist cave temples and monasteries in Inner China, Chinese Turkestan and Tibet. In recent years, she has devoted herself to the iconological studies of the Buddhist pantheon during the eleventh to fifteenth centuries. She puts the emphasis on astral deities because of their relation to the cosmological structure. Her publications include Studies on the Chronology of the Kizil Wall Paintings (Beijing, 2012) and several articles.