She received her BA in Asian and Western history at Seoul National University in South Korea. She studied in the Department of East Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where she received her MA. She came to the United States in 2001 and received her PhD from the department of history at Yale University in 2008. Her bookMapping the Chinese and Islamic Worlds: Cross-Cultural Exchange in Pre-Modern Asia will be published by Cambridge University Press. This study explores medieval contact and exchange between the Islamic World and China by utilizing geographic and cartographic information. At John Jay College, she teaches courses about Chinese history, global history, and justice in the non-Western tradition.