Deng Fei is an art historian, as well as an educator. In recent years, she has led her team to explore the social value and emotional code of historical life from the perspective of ancient Chinese tomb art, and has become an active explorer in the research of ancient and modern art. She has cultivated numerous outstanding talents in the field of history, and has been widely published while making significant contributions to art and archaeological research, cultural heritage, and public historical dissemination. She has been dedicated to the study of art and archaeology for nearly 20 years, not only creating new academic directions, but also understanding life and emotions from the research, which has guided more people to establish a positive life view.
Deng Fei has been influenced by her family and has had a strong interest in history and culture since childhood. As a child, she enjoyed visiting museums and learning about the stories behind cultural relics. Driven by her personal interests, she entered the History Department of Peking University to pursue a bachelor’s degree in 2000. After graduation, she went to Oxford University to pursue a doctoral degree in Oriental Studies. Now Deng Fei teaches at the National Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies at Fudan University and has continued to develop her research in the field of art, history, and literature. She has also been an active participant in academic exchanges. She once served as a visiting scholar at the Department of History at Warwick University and at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia at Tokyo University, and worked as a visiting professor of East Asian Studies at University of Rennes. From 2017 to 2018, she was also selected as a visiting scholar at the Harvard Yenching Institute.
At present, Deng Fei mainly engages in research on Chinese archaeology, art history and material culture of East Asia, which spans multiple disciplines such as history, archaeology, art, literature, etc. With a broad academic perspective, she has achieved fruitful academic results in multiple research fields. Image, Space and Belief: Chinese Mortuary Art of the Song and Jin Periods, one of her academic monographs which was selected as a project supported by Chinese National Fund of Social Science, has provided a new perspective and inspiring methods for the study of archaeology. Up to now, she has published widely in many core (authoritative) periodicals such as Art Research, Ethnic Arts Quarterly, The Study of Art History and Archaeology and Cultural Relics, which have been highly recognized by the academic community. In May 2023, Deng Fei proposed and hosted an academic workshop titled “Technology and Art: History of Ancient Chinese Technology and Art”. This academic conference interpreted the complex interaction between art and technology from a technical perspective, and linked the artistic characteristics of specific eras and regions with social styles, which has inspired researchers to delve deeper into the history of technology and art.
Deng Fei is currently the leader of the project “Research on the General History of Chinese Image Communication” supported by Chinese MOE Humanities and Social Sciences Fund. She has completed various research projects, including a project supported by Chinese National Fund of Social Science, and Shanghai Pujiang Project Fund, etc. Through the examining of visual art and archaeological materials, she has explored new directions in art archaeology, which is of great significance for the research of ancient and modern art.
As a doctoral supervisor at Fudan University, Deng Fei has offered many courses, including The Arts of China, Chinese Art and Archaeology, Chinese Mortuary Art, Topics in Chinese Paintings, and Chinese Religious Art. With a teaching style deeply loved by her students, her courses always provide interest and enlightenment, and encourage students to become comprehensive talents with a sense of social responsibility and innovative spirit. She strongly agrees with the view that Chinese society lacks three types of education the most – sex education, love education, and death education. To help address this, she opened the door for the discussion about life and death through her course “Chinese Mortuary Art” which started in 2014. Although the course discusses ancient tombs, she led students to narrate their imagination of death through diverse medias such as photos, music, and documentaries, which also provided them with an open and free platform to express their attitudes towards life and death.
Given her academic achievements and educational talents, Deng Fei has been invited to give academic lectures at renowned universities at home and abroad, including Harvard University, University of Chicago, National University of Singapore, Peking University, Nanjing University, and Central Academy of Fine Arts, etc. She has also given lectures at cultural institutions such as the Taipei Palace Museum, Shanghai Museum, Shanghai Library and Suzhou Museum. She has additionally orated stories about ancient art within the sphere of public education, the praise for which has reverberated among the audiences.
With Deng Fei’s continuous explorations and investigations of the attitudes towards life and death, life education has become better recognized by the public. At present more and more young people have been joining the pursuit of exploring the meaning of life. Deng Fei hopes that her research on the integration of ancient and modern art will enable everyone to ponder the meaning of life profoundly, and to bravely step forward on the journy of life.
