Visiting Scholar

Changping Zhang is Professor in the archaeology department of the history school at Wuhan University. He received his PhD from Peking University and then worked in the Archaeology and Cultural Relics Institute of Hubei Province for over twenty years, focused on field excavations in southern China. After moving to Wuhan University, his teaching and research interests focus on the Bronze Age and bronze objects. During the year as a visiting scholar at the Harvard-Yenching Institute, he will work on a project entitled ‘A Comparative Study of Chinese and Western Scholarship on Ancient Chinese Bronzes in the 20th Century’.

Wu Chunming is Professor of Archaeology and Museology, Department of History, Xiamen University. He is also Director of the Center for Maritime Archaeology and Director of the Anthropological Archaeology Laboratory Center at Xiamen University. His research focuses on archaeology and early aboriginal Yue ethnicities (百越), the history of southeast China and the ethnology of minorities in southern China, and maritime archaeology and cultural history in the seas surrounding China.

Current Research Projects and Interests: 2010-2015, “Investigating the Maritime Cultural Heritage in Seas Surrounding China”, National Social Science Fundation of China.

Wu Xu studies foodways, ethnoecology, and ethnicity in central China. He received his PhD in anthropology from the University of Alberta and is the author of Farming, Cooking and Eating Practices in the Central China Highlands (Edwin Mellen Press, 2011). Currently, he is working on a project entitled Hezha Foods in Central China: Culture, Biopolicy and Botanical Diversity.

Wang Bei is Associate Professor, Institute of Chinese Minority Languages, Minzu University of China. Her research focuses on the interface between information structure and prosody in many Chinese minority languages. She received her PhD from the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2002. She has previously taught at the Institute of Linguistics, University of Potsdam, Germany and at Beijing Normal University.

Current Research Projects and Interests: Information structure, prosody, Chinese minority languages

Song Ping received her Ph.D. in Social and Behavioral Sciences from the University of Amsterdam. Since 2006 she has been Professor of Anthropology at Xiamen University. Her teaching focuses on globalization and anthropology, modern China and Chinese culture. She is Director of the Research Center for Chinese Studies at Xiamen University, and has been a visiting professor at the National University of Singapore (2010) and the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands (2004-05). Her most recent research projects are ‘”The cultural Southeast” and transnational Chinese social practices’, and ‘Cultural subjectivity in globalization: transnational social practices of immigrant communities’. While at the Harvard-Yenching Institute, she will work on a project entitled Exploring Local Knowledge and Practice: New Migration and the Question of Modernity.

Soon-Yong Pak is Associate Professor in the Department of Education at Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea. Dr. Pak is an anthropologist specializing in anthropology of education and currently teaches related subjects as well as courses on qualitative research methodology. He has carried out several fieldwork and research projects in Korea and Turkey. He has published a number of papers on the social history of schooling as well as the cultural dimensions of education in his regions of interest. His ongoing research interests involve the changing social landscape of Korean society and how the education sector is affected as it moves toward a multicultural setting. His more recent research projects involve North Korean refugees, foreign migrant workers, multicultural families, and native English teachers in Korea. During his stay at Harvard-Yenching Institute, he hopes to complete his thesis on the academic resilience of school-aged North Korean refugees by utilizing data collected through narrative inquiry.

Li Lifeng is professor and chair of the Department of Political Science, Nanjing University. He is also a guest professor at the John Hopkins-Nanjing Center for American and Chinese Studies. His research mainly focuses on Chinese political history, especially the transformation of grassroots politics in 20th century China. Dr. Li has published The Revolutionary Party and the Rural Society (Jiangsu People’s Publishing House, 2011) and numerous articles and reviews in China’s leading academic journals. He is the Chinese translator of Awakening China (John Fitzgerald), Political Philosophy (David Miller), and History (John Arnold). The undergraduate and postgraduate courses he offers include “Political Institutions and Thought in Modern China”, “Political Sociology”, “History of Chinese Political Institutions”, and “Rural Politics in China”.

Yasuhiro Kamimura is Associate Professor of Welfare Sociology and Comparative Social Policy at Nagoya University, Japan. He studied at the University of Tokyo, and worked there and at Hosei University. He has published on the development of welfare states in East Asia, new corporatism in Korea and Taiwan, and social foundations of East Asian social policy.

Jung Min is Professor of Korean Literature at Hanyang University, Republic of Korea. Min earned his B.A. in Korean Literature, and M.A. and Ph.D. in Pre-Modern Korean Literature and Classical Studies from Hanyang University. After completing his dissertation on “Discourses on Literature and Prose Exposition of Late Chosŏn,” his research has focused on Korea’s eighteenth century literature, which gave him a befitting opportunity to serve as the president of Eighteenth Century Studies of Korea in 2006-2008. 

His main research interest is literary thought and cultural identities of eighteenth century Korean intellectuals.  In order to examine cultural interaction in the macro sphere of eighteenth century East Asia, he has conducted extensive research on travelogues to China and Japan—called Yŏnhaengnok and Sahaengnok, respectively—which have been recorded by various government delegations of Korea. His earnest exploration of the communicative modes and cultural dynamics of early modern East Asia sheds new light on the transformation of aesthetic culture and intellectual shifts in late Chosŏn Korea. 

Maggie Mei Kei Hui is an Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Maggie received her Bachelor and Master of Architecture from the University of Melbourne and has worked as a registered architect in Melbourne previously. She received her PhD degree from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her dissertation was focused on Tibetan monastic settlements and vernacular architecture in Eastern Tibet. Besides research and teaching, Maggie has also curated public art and architecture exhibitions in Hong Kong showcasing architectural students’ design.  Her current research projects include Tibetan Vernacular Architecture at the Cultural Periphery, looking at architectural tradition and cross-cultural influence in a region inhabited by Tibetans, Muslims and Chinese. While at the  Harvard-Yenching Institute, she will focus her research on several Tibetan nunneries built in different periods which are located in close proximity to Labrang at the periphery of the Tibetan Plateau.