Onstead Institute announces Panpan Yang as the 2026-27 Dissertation Award Recipient

Spring 2026:The Onstead Institute Dissertation Award recipient is Panpan Yang, a CVAD Art Education doctoral candidate and teaching assistant in the Department of Art Education at the UNT College of Visual Arts and Design. The Onstead Institute Dissertation Award of $5,000 recognizes doctoral candidates in Art Education whose scholarship exhibits excellence within the field. 
 
Panpan Yang is facing forward and smiling. She wears a bow in her dark hair and a blue sweater suit.
Panpan Yang, 2026-27 Dissertation Award Winner
Panpan Yang, a Ph.D. candidate in Art Education, is an artist, researcher and art educator whose interdisciplinary practice weaves together Chinese traditional art, digital media and socially engaged art education. Her work examines how artistic media and materials carry cultural narratives, ethical values and intergenerational meaning. Through visual storytelling and material experimentation, she engages traditional practices such as ink work, paper-based media and cultural assemblage alongside contemporary processes including digital manipulation, collage, installation and experimental material layering. Across her practice, art functions as a mode of care, dialogue and cultural continuity within communities.
 
Yang's research centers on intergenerational and community-based art education, with an emphasis on collaborative, process-oriented art-making practices. Her dissertation examines art workshops that bring together rural elder women and urban younger women, investigating how traditional cultural skills operate not only as technical knowledge but also as ethical practices embedded in everyday life, memory and relational care. Grounded in feminist ethics, social justice and ecological awareness, her research positions art making as a relational and transformative educational practice that values participant agency and lived experience.
 
Yang holds a master’s degree in artistic design and a bachelor’s degree in animation from Northeast Electric Power University in Jilin, China. Her master’s thesis, "Inheritance and Innovation of Chinese Animation Visual Language," examined how traditional Chinese aesthetics are reinterpreted within contemporary animation practices. Her undergraduate thesis analyzed character action and narrative expression in animated short films. These early studies established her sustained interest in visual storytelling, movement and embodied expression. She also completed an associate degree in arts and an ESL program at Dallas College, Brookhaven campus, in Farmers Branch, Texas, experiences that strengthened her cross-cultural perspective and commitment to inclusive education.
 
As an educator, Yang has taught Foundations classes at the University of North Texas in the College of Visual Arts and Design, including the course titled Foundations: Space and Foundations: Systems and Transformations. She values students’ individual experiences and learning rhythms, encouraging experimentation, critical inquiry and reflective engagement with materials. She has also served as a teaching assistant and supported instruction and research in fabrication labs, assisting with 3D printing, laser cutting, Riso printing, fabric printing and related digital tools. In addition, she has contributed to museum and archival work through her involvement with the Texas Fashion Collection, supporting artifact digitization and best practices in documentation and storage.
 
Yang’s scholarly publications address animation aesthetics, visual language and Chinese art theory, as well as emerging intersections among art, ecology and biocultural conservation. Her work and research have been presented at national and international conferences, including the National Art Education Association, the Texas Art Education Association and the InSEA World Congress. Her speaking topics include intergenerational and community-based art education, feminist ethics of care, ecological art pedagogy, visual culture and gaze studies, and the role of art in advancing social justice and cultural heritage through media experimentation and workshop-based practices.
 
Her artworks can be viewed on her website, Panpan Yang Art Works.