Mimi Chusid specializes in Japanese Buddhist art and visual culture with an emphasis on the premodern period. Her research interests engage a wide variety of issues such as the relationships between art, text, and ritual; the role of women in the production and reception of religious images; the place of conservation in art historical inquiry; and Buddhist materialities. Her current book project examines the intersection of women, art production, and Pure Land practice. In particular, she is interested in how ontologies of materials and images helped shape the perception of soteriologically charged practices geared toward women. Her first book,The Ill-Fated Afterlife: Painting the Buddhist Cosmos in Premodern Japan (University of Washington Press, 2026),  examines the emergence in thirteenth-century Japan of images of Buddhist hell used to benefit the dead. Before joining the University of Washington in 2021, she held postdoctoral positions at the Burke Center for Japanese Art at Columbia University, and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.