Jingrui Yan is a PhD candidate in Cinema & Media Studies at the University of Washington. She is interested in the history of women’s labor, media technology, and cinema space, delving into their impact on cinematic experiences and perceptions. She is enthusiastic about exploring new approaches in film studies, including video essays and digital humanities. She has contributed to digital humanities projects like Chinese Cinema Knowledge System and Chinese Modern Art Archives. Building upon her past archival research, she is currently working on a database project on women’s labor in early Chinese movie theaters such as usherettes and interpreters.

Yan is a recipient of the 2026 Digital Humanities Summer Fellowship for her project, "An Encyclopedia of Media Toys," with Mal Ahern. Toys often represent the media technologies of their time: telephones, projectors, cameras, radios, computers, and other media objects. These toys also articulate what their makers found important about those media’s social, emotional, and technological functions. For their project, they will create a website that presents and interprets a physical collection of children’s toys in the context of media history.