Jia is a first-year PhD student. She received her BA in Classical Languages with minors in Archaeology and Creative Writing from Knox College and her MA in Classics from the University of Kansas. Her MA thesis, "Object-ive Subjectivity: Speaking Doors in Roman Elegy," focused on the material and narrative subjectivity of the door narrators in Catullus 67 and Propertius 1.16. Jia's other research interests include the performative nature of the street in Roman comedy and elegy as well as the representation of other-motherhood in Lucian's Dialogues of the Courtesans. Jia is a proud Kansan and an avid listener of BBC Radio 4's The Archers.