Dr. Ying Diao, 2016-2019
Curriculum Vitae
Over more than a decade, Ying has studied, taught, and conducted research in five countries: China, the United States, Myanmar, Thailand, and Germany. She holds a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology (2016) from the University of Maryland and has been a Post-doctoral Fellow in the Religious Diversity Department since December 2016. As an anthropologist of music and religion, she researches the intersection of religion, sound and media, and her special areas are minority Christian history and culture on the China-Myanmar border. She has carried out extensive ethnographic work among the Lisu, a Tibeto-Burman-speaking people spread across the mountainous regions of Southwest China and Southeast Asia. Her ongoing book project, “Sounding the Christian Minorities: Media Margin and Lisu Religiosity on the China-Myanmar Border”, explores how material objects and technologically-mediated sound are being employed by the Christian Lisu to create everyday audible religiosity, which have become essential to the indigenous perception and practices of faith.