Other UBC Faculty with Interests in Asian Studies
Institute for Asian Research
The Institute for Asian Research houses many faculty members with research interests in Asia, particularly focused on contemporary Asia. Please refer to the following link: http://www.iar.ubc.ca/aboutus/iarfacultystaff/faculty.aspx
Timothy Cheek Professor, Institute of Asian Research
Louis Cha Chair of Chinese Research
Email: t.cheek(at)ubc.ca
Website: http://www.iar.ubc.ca/introduction/cheek.html
Dr. Cheek’s interests include Modern China, particularly China’s intellectuals and Chinese Communist Party history. Current projects include contemporary Chinese intellectuals and Chinese thought, writings of Mao Zedong (Yan’an period), and Chinese historiography.
Julian Dierkes
Assistant Professor, Institute of Asian Research
Kenidanren Chair in Japanese Research
Email: j(dot)dierkes(at)ubc(dot)ca
Website: www.sociolog.com/jdierkes/
Website: http://www.iar.ubc.ca/introduction/faculty/jdierkes/index.html
Julian Dierkes is interested in comparative political sociology and sociology of education, including Japanese and German history education, Japanese supplementary education, Canada-EU-Japan policy responses to globalization, changes in Japanese legal education and education in Mongolia. He is also interested in economic sociology and organizational behaviour, the organizational structure of large U.S. firms , East Asian corporations and organizational behaviour, implications of Japan's malaise for organizational sociology and natural resource regulation and economic development.
Paul Evans
Professor , Institute of Asian Research
Director, Program for Canada-Asia Policy Studies
Email: pmevans(at)interchange.ubc.ca
Website: http://www.iar.ubc.ca/introduction/pmevans.html
Paul Evans is currently involved in the direction of two research and exchange programs on cooperative and human security in Southeast and Northeast Asia, funded by the Canadian International Development Agency, and a project supported by the Ford Foundation and the Japan Center for International Exchange on security dialogues and research in the Asia Pacific region.
Milind Kandlikar
Assistant Professor, Institute of Asian Research
E-mail: milind.k(at)ubc.ca
Website: www.iar.ubc.ca/introduction/kandlikar.html
Abidin Kusno
Associate Professor, Institute of Asian Research
Canada Research Chair in Asian Urbanism and Culture
E-mail: akusno(at)interchange.ubc.ca
Website: http://www.iar.ubc.ca/introduction/kusno.html
Abidin Kusno’s research interests include relations between architecture, urban design, and political cultures; historical and contemporary representations of identities and city life in Asia; effects of colonialism, modernity and nationalism on the visual and spatial environment of the city and how they shaped the social and political identities of the urban population; and questions of representation, space, violence and collective memory.
Hyung Gu Lynn
AECL/KEPCO Chair in Korean Research
Associate Editor, Pacific Affairs
Institute for Asian Research
E-mail: hlynn(at)interchange.ubc.ca
Website: http://www.iar.ubc.ca/introduction/hglynn.html
Hyung Gu Lynn’s research focuses on the 20th century histories of Korea and Japan, on topics that include: state and society in colonial Korea; migration and colonialism; political economy of post-1965 ROK-Japan relations; globalization; popular culture; clothing and visuality in Korea and Japan; Japanese business history; comparative colonialism; and epistemologies of the humanities and the social sciences.
Masao Nakamura
Professor, Institute of Asian Research
Konwakai Japan Research Chair and Professor
Editorial Board, Managerial & Decision Economics
E-mail: masao.nakamura(at)sauder.ubc.ca
Website: http://pacific.commerce.ubc.ca/nakamura/
Masao Nakamura’s research and teaching interests include International Business, Technology and Environmental Management; Japanese and Asian Economies; Corporate Governance; Economic Behavior of Firms and Households; and Econometrics.
Kyung-Ae Park
Korea Foundation Chair
Associate Director for Teaching, Institute of Asian Research
Associate Director, Center for Korean Research
E-mail: kpark@politics.ubc.ca
Website: http://www.iar.ubc.ca/introduction/kpark.htm
Kyung-Ae Park is interested in North and South Korean Politics, US-Korea Relations and Gender and Development.
Pitman B. Potter
Director, Institute of Asian Research
Professor of Law, UBC Law Faculty
E-mail: potter(at)interchange.ubc.ca
Website: http://www.iar.ubc.ca/introduction/pbpotter.html
Dr. Potter’s teaching and research are focused on PRC and Taiwan law and policy in the areas of foreign trade and investment, dispute resolution, intellectual property, contracts, business regulation, and human rights. Dr. Potter serves on the Editorial Boards of The China Quarterly, The Hong Kong Law Journal, China: An International Journal, and Pacific Affairs (chair). He has published several books, including most recently From Leninist Discipline to Socialist Legalism: Peng Zhen on Law and Political Authority in the PRC (Stanford, 2003), as well as numerous articles for such journals as Law & Social Inquiry, The China Quarterly, Problems of Post-Communism, UCLA Pacific Basin Law Journal, the Canadian Journal of Law and Society and the Canadian Business Law Journal.
Tsering Wangdu Shakya
Canadian Research Chair in Religion and Contemporary Society in Asia
Institute for Asian Research
E-mail: tshakya(at)interchange.ubc.ca
Website: ttp://www.iar.ubc.ca/introduction/shakya.html Tsering Wangdu Shakya’s research interests include the emergence of modern Tibetan literature since 1950. In particular, he examines the shift in Tibetan language and its usage from the 1950s to the present day, and how contemporary literature is used as a voice of resistance in modern Tibetan society. He is also interested in text and printing culture in Tibet, Banditry in Tibet and the events of the Cultural Revolution in Tibet.
Ilan Vertinsky
Vinod Sood Professor of International Business Studies
E-mail: ilan.vertinsky(at)commerce.ubc.ca
Website: www.iar.ubc.ca/introduction/vertinsky.html
History Department
Many faculty member in the history department have research interests focused on both contemporary and pre-modern Asia; please refer to the following link:
http://www.history.ubc.ca/content.php?pk_pagesid=138
Steven Lee
Associate Professor, History Department
E-mail: stevenhl(at)interchange.ubc.ca
Website: http://www.history.ubc.ca/people.php?people=65&usergroup=5
Steven Lee is interested in Cold War History, Canadian and American Diplomatic History as well as Modern Korean History. He is currently working on two book projects. One is a survey of twentieth century global history (Blackwell), and the second is a history of modern warfare in East Asia (Cambridge).
Henry Yu
Associate Professor, Department of History
Email: henryyu(at)interchange.ubc.ca
Website: http://www.history.ubc.ca/people.php?people=81&usergroup=5
Henry Yu is involved in the collective effort to reimagine the history of Vancouver and of British Columbia through the concept of "Pacific Canada," a perspective that focuses on how migrants from Asia, Europe, and other parts of the Americas engaged with each other and with First Nations peoples historically. Prof. Yu is the Director of the Initiative for Student Teaching and Research in Chinese Canadian Studies (INSTRCC), the first stage of a long term commitment at UBC to the study of trans-Pacific migrations and the long history of interactions between Asian and European migrants and First Nations peoples in Pacific Canada.
Joy Dixon
Associate Professor, Department of History
Email: joydixon(at)interchange.ubc.ca
Website: http://www2.history.ubc.ca/jdixon/
Joy Dixon’s work has included Divine Feminine: Theosophy and Feminism in England, the first full-length study of the relationship between alternative and esoteric spirituality and the women's suffrage movement in England. The Theosophical Society was founded in New York in 1875, by the Russian emigre Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and the American Civil War Veteran Henry Steele Olcott. The organization was one of the first to popularize Hinduism and Buddhism in the west, and to shape western perceptions of those traditions. By the early twentieth century theosophy and other forms of esoteric religion had become important elements in the emerging women's movement.
Glen Peterson
Associate Professor, Department of History
Email: glpeters(at)interchange.ubc.ca
Website: http://www.history.ubc.ca/people.php?people=71&usergroup=5
Glen Peterson’s interests include Modern Chinese history; education and the construction of modern Chinese political and cultural identities; China and the overseas Chinese; and history of Chinese transnationalism. His current research examines the role of the Chinese state in the construction of cultural and political identities in Chinese emigrant communities in South China, Penang (Malaysia), and Singapore from the founding of the Chinese Republic in 1912 to the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, with particular emphasis upon the role of citizenship claims and education policies. He is also working on a study of US and UNHCR intervention in the Hong Kong refugee crisis of the early 1950s.
John Roosa
Assistant Professor, Department of History
Email: jroosa(at)interchange.ubc.ca
Website: http://www.history.ubc.ca/people.php?people=74&usergroup=5
John Roosa’s interests include Southeast Asia, South Asia, nationalism, colonialism, oral history, social memory and genocide.
William Wray
Associate Professor, Department of History
E-mail: wiwray(at)shaw.ca
Website: http://www.history.ubc.ca/people.php?people=80&usergroup=5
William Wray’s research interests include Japanese business and industrial history, especially shipping and trading companies and the electrical industry as well as Japanese politics in the 1930s.
Department of Anthropology
Brian S. Chisholm
Senior Instructor, Department of Anthropology
Email: chisholm(at)interchange.ubc.ca
Website:http://www.anth.ubc.ca/Brian_S__Chisholm.1898.0.html
Brian Chisholm’s interests include prehistoric subsistence, archaeometry, bio-archaeology, paleo-anthropology, Pacific Northwest, Japan, S.E. and E. Asia. His recent research projects were on Stable Isotope Studies of Paleodiet in Japan, funded largely by the Ministry of Education's Center of Excellence, Japan and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. This was in collaboration with Dr. Hiroko Koike of Kyushu University, and focused on the reconstruction of paleodiets, particularly in the Jomon Period of Japan's prehistory. Presently he is collaborating with Dr. Zhi-Chun Jing in similar research at Anyang in China.
Jing, Zhi-Chun
Assistant Professor, Anthropology
Canada Research Chair in Pacific-Asia Archaeology
Email: jingzh(at)interchange.ubc.ca
Website: http://www.anth.ubc.ca/Zhichun_Jing.1895.0.html
Dr. Jing's areas of interest include archaeology of early China, geoarchaeology, human impact on ancient environments, archaic states and early complex societies, systematic regional survey and analysis, archaeological method and theory, quantitative analysis, environmental archaeology, provenance of archaic jades and ceramics, and archaeometry.
Department of Art History
Tsao, Hsingyuan
Assistant Professor, Art History
Email: htsao(at)interchange.ubc.ca
Website: http://www.ahva.ubc.ca/facultyIntroDisplay.cfm?InstrID=54&FacultyID=1
Professor Tsao holds a Ph.D. in Art History from Stanford University. Her area of special interest is the art of China's Middle Period (the 10th to 12th centuries), the ruling period of the Liao and Song Dynasties. She is also interested in Chinese contemporary art and film.
Katherine Hacker
Assistant Professor, Department of Art History
Email: kfh(at)interchange.ubc.ca
Website: http://ahva.ubc.ca/facultyIntroDisplay.cfm?InstrID=6&FacultyID=1
Katherine Hacker’s research interests are South and southeast Asian art. Her interdisciplinary research interests focus on the relationships between visual culture, social practice, and cultural politics and are informed by post-colonial theory and cultural studies.
Caroline Hirasawa
Assistant Professor, Department of Art History
Email: chirasaw(at)interchange.ubc.ca
Website: http://ahva.ubc.ca/facultyIntroDisplay.cfm?InstrID=135&FacultyID=1
Caroline Hirasawa received her Ph.D. in Japanese art history from Stanford University in 2005. She also studied studio art at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music, and Japanese religion in the Department of Eastern Philosophy at Waseda University. She is interested in Buddhist and combinatory Shinto-Buddhist ideology and art, medieval setsuwa literature, narrative imagery from emaki to manga, artifacts employed in pilgrimage promotion and practice, images used for proselytizing to women, and Japanese film.
School of Music
Nathan Hesselink
Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology
Email: n.hesselink(at)ubc.ca
Website: http://www.music.ubc.ca/index.php?id=2151&url=detail.php%26p%3D1702%26r%3Dbio%26e%3D1%26d%3D15
Nathan Hesselink is a researcher-performer of South Korean percussion traditions. He received his Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of London, SOAS, and was a postdoctoral research fellow in Korean studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His publications include Contemporary Directions: Korean Folk Music Engaging the Twentieth Century and Beyond (ed., University of California, 2001) and P'ungmul: South Korean Drumming and Dance (University of Chicago, 2006, winner of the 2008 Lee Hye-gu Award), as well as articles in Ethnomusicology, Asian Music, British Journal of Ethnomusicology, Tongyang Umak, Journal of Musicological Research, and others.
Department of English
Chris Lee
Assistant Professor, Department of English
Email: chrisml(at)interchange.ubc.ca
Website: http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/clee/
Chris Lee’s areas of research include Asian North American literatures and cultures, American Studies (with a focus on race/ethnicity and transationalism), critical and literary theory (especially the Frankfurt School), and aesthetic philosophy. One of his goals is to connect his teaching and research to the vibrant Asian Canadian community in the Vancouver area.
Jisha Menon
Assistant Professor, Department of English
Email: jmenon(at)interchange.ubc.ca
Website: http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/jmenon/
Dr. Menon is currently working on a book manuscript: Bordering on Drama: Violence, Gender and Community in Postcolonial India. In it, she argues that the Indian nation is a performatively constituted "imagined community," shaped through embodied acts of violence and selective remembering. Using performance as an analytical category, she explores spectatorial practices that theatrically produce the nation for its citizens through a wide array of performances - from theatre and cinema to elections, border rituals and religious processions.
Glenn Deer
Assistant Professor, English Department
Email: gdeer(at)interchange.ubc.ca
Website: http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/gdeer/
In 1993 Deer's interests in ideology critique and the rhetoric of racialization developed into research on rhetorical representations of Asian Canadian culture in the local media and a series of directed readings with graduate students, graduate seminars, and undergraduate courses in the areas of comparative Asian Canadian and Asian American studies. Deer's recent teaching and research interests include the politics of historiography in Michael Ondaatje, comparative studies of Asian American and Asian Canadian writing, mixed-race writing and trans-ethnic desire, the representations of food in trans-cultural writing, and the discourses of the nuclear.
Department of Geography
David Edgington
Associate Professor, Department Of Geography
Email: edgingtn at geog ubc ca
Website: http://www.geog.ubc.ca/people/index.php?action=2&cat=faculty&memberID=200006
David Edgington’s research interests focus on regional and urban aspects of Japan's development as well as Japanese trade and overseas investment.
Jim Glassman
Assistant Professor Geography
Email: glassman(at)geog.ubc.ca
Website: http://www.geog.ubc.ca/~glassman/
Jim Glassman’s areas of specialization are in Development Geography, Third World Urbanization, Economic Geography, Political Economy, Political Geography, Southeast Asia and the Pacific Rim. His current research is “Decentralization or Regionalization in Southern Thailand and the Greater Mekong Sub-Region,” funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Geraldine Pratt
Professor, Geography
Email: gpratt at geog ubc ca
Website: http://www.geog.ubc.ca/~gpratt/Site/Home.html
Geraldine Pratt’s research interests focus on feminist geography, housing and Labour markets. She has also studied Filipino family reunification in Vancouver and has collaborated with the Philippine Women Centre of BC for the last 11 years, researching the lives of Filipino women who come to Canada through a temporary work visa program, the Live-in Caregiver Program. She first researched the circumstances of women in the program, and is now examining their lives after leaving the program, gaining Canadian citizenship and sponsoring their families.
Political Science
Diane Mauzy
Professor, Political Science
Email: dkmauzy(at)politics.ubc.ca
Website: http://www.politics.ubc.ca/index.php?id=2459
Diane Mauzy (Ph.D, UBC) writes on Southeast Asian politics, and her publications include the major work Barisan Nasional: Coalition Politics in Malaysia. Her research interests include ethnicity, coalition-building and consociationalism, parties and elections, elites, human rights, and political culture (Islam and Confucian). She is the Chair of the Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei Study Group of the Association of Asian Studies, and is past President of the Canadian Council of Southeast Asian Studies and former Vice-President of the Canadian Asian Studies Association. She is also past book review editor of Pacific Affairs.
Benjamin Nyblade
Assistant Professor, Political Science
Faculty Associate: Centre for Japanese Research
E-mail: bnyblade(at)politics.ubc.ca
Website: http://www.politics.ubc.ca/index.php?id=8140
Benjamin Nyblade (Ph.D. University of California, San Diego) joined the department as an Assistant Professor in July 2006 after spending two years in the department as a Killam Research Fellow. His primary research topics are in comparative democratic institutions, political parties and elections around the world (with a particular emphasis on Japan and Western Europe). Current research projects investigate the effect of electoral system reform in Japan, the dynamics of coalition government formation and duration in Western Europe, and theories of party competition. Other interests include Japanese foreign policy, empirical political theory and research methodology.
Yves Tiberghien
Assistant Professor, Political Science
Faculty Associate of Centre for Japanese Research
Email: yvestibe(at)politics.ubc.ca
Website: http://www.politics.ubc.ca/index.php?id=2503 http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/tiberg/Homepage08/welcome.html
Yves Tiberghien (Ph.D. Stanford, 2002) specializes in comparative political economy (Japan, Korea, China, and the European Union) as well as in international relations (global governance, globalization). Much of his work centers on the tensions between the pursuit of prosperity (the market) and the pursuit of democratic legitimacy.
Sociology
Renisa Mawani
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology
Email: renisa(at)interchange.ubc.ca
Website: http://www.soci.ubc.ca/index.php?id=11343
Resina Mawani’s research interests are: Law and Society, Sociology of Empire, Historical/ Comparative Sociology, Transnational Histories, Sociology of Modernity, Postcolonial Theory, Biopolitics and Racisms as well as South Asia.
Jennifer Jihye Chun
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology
Email: jjchun(at)interchange.ubc.ca
Website: http://www.soci.ubc.ca/index.php?id=11326
Jennifer Chun’s research interests are: labour and labour movements, globalization and transnationalism, politics of marginality, intersections of race, class and gender, social movements, contemporary Korean studies and ethnography.
Amy Hanser
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology
Email: hanser(at)interchange.ubc.ca
Website: http://www.soci.ubc.ca/index.php?id=11330
Amy Hanser’s research has been on culture and markets, inequality, gender, consumption, service work and China. Her current research is on consumption and inequality in China as well as culture and social change in Chinese marketplaces.