Michael graduated from Tsinghua University in spring 2019, receiving his MA in art history and theory with a focus on Chinese Buddhist art and archaeology. His current research addresses a group of multi-tiered, modular Northern Dynasties sculptural pagodas discovered in Qin county, Shanxi in the 1950s. Prior to his graduate work at Tsinghua, Michael spent a year at the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies (IUP) in Beijing. He received his BA from Vassar College in 2014, double majoring in Asian studies and Chinese language & literature with a minor in art history. Michael is interested in the pictorial programming of sacred spaces, the relationship between devotional icons and ritual, and visual representations of sound in early medieval Chinese art.