Sasha's research concentrates on medieval Daoism. Her interests include the conceptualizations of the body, selfhood, sexuality and gender in religious discourse; visionary experience and visualization practice; and non-discursive modes of thoughts in the religious imagination. Her current work explores the close connection between the Daoist subtle physiology and the medical notions in early medieval China. More specifically, it traces the complex development of the visualization praxis of untying the "knots of death" in Shangqing Daoism (4-13 centuries) and demonstrates how this praxis evolved from the popular views of female pollution and the early medical ideas, and how it later developed under the influence of other contemporaneous phenomena, such as the high literary culture and Buddhism.

Prior to starting the doctoral program, Sasha completed the MTS program at the Harvard Divinity School. She holds a BA from UC Berkeley and a prior PhD from Harvard (Linguistics, 2010).