Kate Lingley is Associate Professor of Chinese Art History at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. She was educated at Harvard University, Peking University, and the University of Chicago, where she received her Ph.D. In 2004. Professor Lingley's research focuses on Buddhist votive sculpture of the Northern and Southern Dynasties period, with a particular interest in the social history of religious art. Her dissertation was a study of donor figures as representations of the self-image of Buddhist art patrons in the sixth century. She is interested in the social significance of representation, religious practice, and identity, particularly ethnic identity, in a period in which non-Chinese peoples ruled much of North China. This has led to a further interest in Chinese identity in a range of historical periods. Her most recent public project was an exhibition of Chinese painting and calligraphy from Honolulu collections that focused on the work of reformers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is currently working on a book manuscript that explores the representation of identity in Northern Dynasties China by examining the relationship between tomb portraits and donor portraits from the same period.