Dr Jingyi Jenny Zhao
Dr Jingyi Jenny Zhao is ISF Senior Research Fellow at the Needham Research Institute, Cambridge.
Dr Zhao completed her BA, MPhil and PhD degrees in Classics at the University of Cambridge. She works in the area of Sino-Hellenic Studies, taking a comparative perspective on the philosophical traditions of ancient Greece and early China. Her main interests lie in the fundamentals of what makes us human, with a focus in particular on moral education and the emotions, and more recently representations of infancy and childhood in philosophical texts. Her monograph Aristotle and Xunzi on Shame, Moral Education, and the Good Life was published by Oxford University Press in 2024. It is the first major work that takes two philosophers from the ancient Greek and early Chinese traditions to stimulate discussion of an interdisciplinary nature on the rich and complex topic of the emotions – in particular, of shame.
Alongside her research, Dr Zhao has worked extensively in public outreach, including filming for the BBC Documentary Story of China, writing children’s books on Philosophy, and producing academic journalism by way of interviews with eminent scholars.
In 2024-25, Dr Zhao is a Berggruen Fellow at the Berggruen Institute China Center, Peking University.
Select publications
- Zhao, Jingyi Jenny. Aristotle and Xunzi on Shame, Moral Education, and the Good Life. Oxford University Press, 2024.
- Zhao, Jingyi Jenny. Humility: Ancient Greek and Chinese Perspectives. In Humility, edited by Justin Steinberg. Oxford Philosophical Concepts series. Oxford University Press (forthcoming)
- Zhao, Jingyi Jenny. Representations of Infancy and Childhood in Laozi and Heraclitus. In Sapiential Traditions and Ancient Scholarship in Comparative Perspective, edited by Glenn W. Most and Michael Puett. Philological Encounters Monographs. Brill, 2022
- Zhao, Jingyi Jenny. Shame and Moral Education in Aristotle and Xunzi. In Ancient Greece and China Compared, edited by G. E. R. Lloyd and Jingyi Jenny Zhao, 110-130. Cambridge University Press, 2018
- Lloyd, G. E. R. and Jingyi Jenny Zhao, eds. Ancient Greece and China Compared. Cambridge University Press, 2018
Select awards
- Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Non-Government Funded Students Abroad (Exceptional Award)
- Great Britain-China Educational Trust Award
- Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) International Placement Scheme Award for 6-month research fellowship at the Library of Congress, Washington D.C.
- Angus Prize for Classics, Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge