Academic Bio
Yanxiao He (BA, Indiana University, 2016) is a second year PhD student in the ancient history program of NELC. He is primarily focused on the Achaemenid empire and Hellenistic world. This interest comes out of his fascination with comparing between ancient Greece and China, a passion goes all the way back to the high school. He gradually figured out that doing ancient Iranian history is a perfect way to balance this otherwise ill-balanced interest. This concern inevitably involves such issues as the socio-economic network and cultural exchange across Eurasia under the Persian and Greek rule, regional history of Bactria, and early China and Inner Asia. He has also maintained a strong interest in using cultural theories to elucidate ancient historiography, which, above all, should be regarded as a genre of cultural practice of given ideology and agenda by and for a certain group of people rather than direct historical testimony.