Yunxiao Xiao

Yunxiao Xiao (Ch. 肖芸曉) is a scholar of Chinese literature and cultural history specializing in late Warring States and Qin–Han paleographic texts. With research interests in epistemological practices and information technologies before the age of paper, Yunxiao explores the interplay between knowledge, people, and ancient media.

Her first ongoing book project, The Crafts of the Hidden Hands: Scribal Culture and the Making of Texts in Early China, examines the ordinary book producers and actual practices behind the beginning of Chinese classical knowledge and traces how the earliest written culture in East Asia emerged and evolved. Drawing on major archaeological discoveries of ancient manuscripts from ca. 400 BCE to 300 CE—examined as both cultural documents and material objects—this project investigates how ancient readers and writers produced, transmitted, updated, and reinvented literary and legal knowledge on bamboo and wood, illuminating the omnipresent authorial voice and editorial power of myriad nameless scribes.

Building on her interest in the history of media, information, and technology, Yunxiao’s second ongoing project explores how administrative data and scholarly information were represented, organized, controlled, and manipulated on bamboo and wood during the Qin–Han empire, aiming to unpack the social-historical significance and cultural-political implications of the transition from bamboo/wood to paper.

Yunxiao has published multiple peer-reviewed articles in Chinese and English and has been selected as a Junior Fellow of the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at the Rare Book School. Before joining UW, she earned her PhD from Princeton University (2024) and served as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University.