Jessica Rawson is professor of Chinese art and archaeology and former warden of Merton College, Oxford. She was made honorary professor in the School of Archaeology and Museology at Peking University in 2019. She previously worked in the Department of Oriental Antiquities (now the Asia Department) at the British Museum and was lead curator for the exhibition China: The Three Emperors, 1662-1795 at the Royal Academy, bringing to London magnificent works of art from the Palace Museum in Beijing. For more than forty years, she has visited, researched, and lectured in most of China's provinces. She was awarded the title of Dame in 2002 and received the Tang Prize in Sinology for "Giving Voice to Mute Objects" in 2022.