Lijun Zhang is Assistant Professor of Folklore in George Mason University’s English Department, associate director of the Folklore Program. She holds a Ph.D. in Folklore from Indiana University and M.A. in Folklore from Beijing Normal University. She serves as associate editor of the Journal of American Folklore. She previously served as Research Curator at the Anthropology Museum of Guangxi in China. Her research interests include material culture, heritage (tangible and intangible), museums and curatorship, institutionalization of culture, tourism, and Chinese folklore. She is co-editor of Chinese Folklore Studies Today: Discourse and Practice and Quilts of Southwest China. She co-curated “Putting Baskets to Use in Southwest China” and the international traveling exhibition “Quilts of Southwest China”. She conducts ethnographic research regarding folk culture in southeast and southwest China. She has participated in multiple American Folklore Society and China Folklore Society collaborative projects and events.