Waseda University

Yu-chi Chang is currently a PhD candidate in the Graduate School of Sport Sciences, Waseda University, Japan. She obtained her BA in Anthropology from National Taiwan University in 2006. She obtained her MA from the Graduate Institute of Sports & Leisure Management, National Taiwan Normal University in 2008. Her research interests include ethnic dance and socio-cultural aspects of health and the female body. Her doctoral dissertation focuses on the localization of belly dance in Taiwan. She explores how Confucian values influence the belly dancing experience of Taiwanese women. Furthermore, she aims at comparing the healthy benefits of belly dancing interpreted by women from different cultural backgrounds.

Rie Odajima is a doctoral student and a visiting lecturer of social anthropology. During her stay at Harvard, she has conducted her Ph.D. dissertation project, entitled The Politics of Heritage: An Ethnographic Study of the Arts of Government in Socialist Laos. Her study is concerned with colonial and post-colonial uses of monuments, museums and tourism, recent contestations over ownership and authenticity of cultural resources and dynamics of social life in Southeast Asia, especially in the Lao PDR.