Yipeng Zhou earned his master's degree from Harvard's REECA program in 2022 and went on to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan. In 2022-2023 he was the coordinator of the Davis Center's Imperiia Project. He earned his bachelor's in Russian language and literature from Zhejiang University. His scholarly interests focus on the historical and contemporary relations between Central Asia and Xinjiang. More broadly, Yipeng is interested in Eurasian borderland history, particularly how geopolitical rivalries, state-building, nation-making, and personal stories intertwined in these lands. He is also a promoter and practitioner of digital scholarship and is dedicated to building open-access information spaces.