Xinyu Liang graduated in 2025 with a PhD in Art History from Rice University with her dissertation titled, "Framing Time and Space in Transcultural Dialogue: The Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh and the “Pictorial Turn” in Ilkhanid Mongol Book Art". Xinyu’s dissertation centers on the illustrations of the Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh (Compendium of Chronicles), the first extensively illustrated world history produced in Ilkhanid Iran (1260–1335) under Mongol rule. It examines how anonymous Ilkhanid artists engaged in intellectual dialogue with diverse pictorial traditions. Xinyu argues that encounters with visual cultures across Eurasia spurred a significant “pictorial turn” in Mongol-ruled Iran, as artists deployed newly acquired pictorial strategies to visualize, interpret, and even reshape complex ideas about history and the world. The project advances the study of Islamic art by reconceptualizing Ilkhanid image-making as a site of intellectual and transcultural knowledge production.

In fall 2026, Xinyu joined the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University as the Aga Khan Fellow in Islamic Art. At Harvard, she will be working on her book project on Ilkhanid book art, which examines the illustrations of the Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh (Compendium of Chronicles), the first extensively illustrated world history book produced in Ilkhanid Iran (1260–1335) under Mongol rule, as a lens onto transcultural exchange across premodern Eurasia.