Meng Tong is the Robert H. N. Ho Buddhism Public Scholar at UCLA East Asian Library, where she works with the Archival Collection of Buddhism in Los Angeles (ACBLA) preserved in Special Collections and collaborates with colleagues to develop innovative instructional materials drawn from these primary sources. Her research focuses on Buddhist art and visual culture in medieval China and neighboring regions (ca. 400 CE – 1000 CE), with particular interests in image-text interplay, visual narrative and narratology, and body language in Buddhist art.

Before joining the UCLA Library, Meng taught art history at Loyola Marymount University, the University of Kansas, and the University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa). She has also contributed to the Digital Dictionary of Buddhism (DDB).

She is currently preparing a digitization project based on the Ruth S. McCandless Records on Nyogen Senzaki, one of the ACBLA collections, with the goal of publishing the archives on digital open-access platforms. She is also developing her dissertation into a book project tentatively titled Intermediary Hand Gesture, which explores non-verbal communication in Buddhist images and ritual performance.