Mariana Zorkina is a PhD candidate at the Asien-Orient-Institut at the Zurich University and a visiting researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her MA in Asian and African Cultures at the St. Petersburg State University with a project on reflection of Daoism in Chinese literature. Currently she studies Tang dynasty “poems on things” yongwushi 詠物詩 and is applying computational methods to the study of language patterns in poetry. She is actively promoting quantitative approaches in literature studies, has introduced courses on Digital Humanities to two universities and has given several public talks on the topic. She is the founder of Methods in Sinology project and serves as a board member and editor in Digital Orientalist.