David Johnson is a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley in the History department. He spent his undergraduate years at Harvard, before attending the University of California, Berkeley where he received his Ph.D, and would go on to be a professor. His research interests include pre-modern China and traditional Chinese popular culture. Some of his representative publications include, Domesticated Deities and Auspicious Emblems: The Iconography of Everyday Life in Village China, which was co-authored with Po Sung-nien; "The City-God Cults of T'ang and Sung China;" and "Mu-lien in Pao-chjian: The Performance Context and Religious Meaning of the Yu-ming pao-ch'uan."