Tingting Xu is a scholar of Chinese art, artistic formats, and media. Her interdisciplinary research discusses the ontologies, frames, grounds, and surfaces of images at the intersection of art history, technology, East Asian studies, and media theory. It also explores the philosophy of visual technology undergirding the transitions and revolutions taking place from the old to the new. She is currently preparing a monograph on early Chinese photography based on her dissertation Beyond Treaty Ports—Chinese Photography 1960-1916: Practitioners, Contexts and Trends (winner of the Feitler Prize for the Best Dissertation of 2020, Department of Art History, University of Chicago). Her second book project, The Accordion Folds: Formats and Medium Imaginations in Chinese Pictorial Art, explores the accordion albums produced in ancient and modern China, and delves into the image-bearing objects that carry the reminiscence and mechanism of the accordion folds. Tingting’s research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council, The Field Museum in Chicago, The Joan and Stanford Alexander Award, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and the Center for the Art of East Asia at The University of Chicago. Before joining Columbia University, she held curatorial positions at the Peabody Essex Museum and The Field Museum. When not engaged in academic work, Tingting plays Beethoven, Haydn, and Bach on the piano. The music takes her to a special place with refreshing sentiments and thoughts. Tingting was a Mellon Fellow in Art Humanities, 2020-22.

Dr. Xu worked on completing her first book manuscript during her term as the Arnaldo Momigliano Postdoctoral Scholar in the Division of the Humanities at The University of Chicago in 2022-2023.