Dr. Fiona Shen

Fiona Lindsay Shen has worked in museums, universities, and cultural organizations in Europe, the United States, and mainland China. She is the author of two books exploring the cultural histories of natural phenomena: Pearl: Nature’s Perfect Gem (Reaktion Books, 2022) and Silver: Nature and Culture (Reaktion Books, 2017). These have appeared in Japanese and Mandarin translations. She is the biographer of an early female translator of classical Chinese poetry: Knowledge is Pleasure: Florence Ayscough in Shanghai (Hong Kong University Press, 2012). Her current research interests are in our sensory experience of the world, and she is completing a third book for Reaktion Books: Lotus: A Sensorium. She holds a PhD in Art History from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Chapman University, California. She has written for Orion magazine, Fourth Genre, the Washington Post, the Cimarron Review, China Today, Modernism, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, as well as many art and design publications. She has previously worked at the University of Minnesota; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Sino-British College, Shanghai; Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China; the University of Wales, UK; and the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.