Dr Jin Gao

Chinese Export Watercolours (CEW) project

I am a Visiting Research Fellow at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) and a Lecturer in Digital Archives at University College London (UCL), where I have contributed to the field of digital humanities and the study of Chinese export watercolours. I have been conducting collaborative research between these two institutions, with my projects including the Chinese Export Watercolours (CEW) project, the Chinese Iconography Thesaurus (CIT), and provenance research into the V&A’s Asian collections. I have secured several research grants and awards, including from UCL, AHRC, and the Sir Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art. My research interests focus on digital humanities, digital cultural heritage, network visualisation, provenance research, global art history, interdisciplinary collaboration, and digital preservation. 

Selected publications

Gao, J., Crymble, A., Mahony, S., Gray, S., Warwick, C., ‘Empowering Global Engagement: The Development of Digital Humanities Research and Pedagogy at UCL’, in Wang, X., Lei Zeng, M., Gao, J. and Zhao, K. (eds), Digital Humanities and Intelligent Computing of Cultural Heritage: Global Development and Chinese Solutions, Taylor & Francis, London, 2024.

Langmead, A., Helmreich, A., Ladd, J., Gao, Lin, Y., Palmer, R., Posthumus, E., Zhang, H., Brosens, K., Beerens, R., De Prekel, I., Lamqaddam, H., Micklewright, N., Mirza, S., Simavi, Z., Smith, J., ‘Network Analysis + Digital Art History: A Roundtable on a Collective Scholarly Experience’, in International Journal for Digital Art History, 2024.

Gao, J., Nyhan, J., Duke-Williams, O. and Mahony, S., ‘Exploring International Collaboration and Language Dynamics in Digital Humanities: Insights from Co-authorship Networks in Canonical Journals’, Journal of Documentation, 79(7), 2023, pp. 240–260.

Gao, J., Zhang, Y., Wang, L., Li, Y., Li, F., Chang, S., Liu, J., ‘Unveiling the V&A Chinese Export Watercolours (CEW) Collection: A Journey of Digitisation and Discovery’, blog post on UCL Department of Information Studies Staff Blog, 8 September 2023.

Gao, J., ‘Challenges for Art Image Search: A Digital Humanities Perspective’ (‘数字人文视野下艺术图像检索的挑战’), World 3: Iconographic Archives (世界3: 图像志文献库), 2022, pp.168–180 [In Chinese].