Zhou’s research interests focus on the intersection of image studies, media theory, and cultural criticism, with particular attention to the theory and creative practice of aesthetic avant-garde based on modernity from the second half of the 19th century onwards. She advocates that art, technology, and audience should be studied as three pillars of heterogeneity when it comes to art history and art criticism, with an emphasis on reinterpreting the unfinished plans of modernism and aesthetic avant-garde practices in the context of the inevitable tensions among the three.

In 2017, she co-edited the series Revisiting the Bauhaus, in which eight basic literature and contemporary research monographs related to the aesthetic vanguard have been published as of 2021.

Author of:

Buildings and Images: The Logic of the Image in Remote Presence (2007) 

The Bauhaus Paradox: The Critical Point of the Vanguard (2019). 

Translation Work:

The Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer (2019) 

Bauhaus Theater (2019).