Xinru Liu


Xinru Liu is an associate professor of early Indian history and world history at The College of New Jersey, and has held since 1993 a full professorship at the Institute of World History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Liu had little formal schooling but instead worked as a peasant and then as a factory worker during the Cultural Revolution. She taught herself English and history and gained admittance to the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned a PhD in 1985 for work on Ancient Indian and Chinese History. Her PhD dissertation was published by Oxford University Press as Ancient India and Ancient China: Trade and Religious Exchanges, A.D. 1-600. She has written many books on Indian and Chinese history.
Liu has won a Grant from American Association of University Women, 1984, a Grant from Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1990. Her book, "Ancient India and Ancient China: Trade and Religious Exchanges, A.D. 1-600" won the award for Outstanding Research Works done between 1977 and 1991 from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She is a member of the American Association of Asian Studies, The American Historical Association, and the World History Association.
Her most recent work is Dionysus and drama in the Buddhist art of Gandhara written jointly with Pia Brancaccio and published in the Journal of Global History.

Books