Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies
Faculty Fellow Highlights
2025-26 Academic Year
The Liu Institute convenes a robust and dedicated body of nearly 100 faculty fellows from nearly every department on campus—all with academic or personal interest in Asia.
New Faculty Fellows
Arun Agrawal
Pulte Family Professor of Development Policy; Inaugural Director, Just Transformations to Sustainability Initiative, Keough School of Global Affairs
Agrawal's work examines the political economy of institutional change, sustainability and conservation and development. He has written on Indigenous knowledge, community-based conservation, common property and commoning, agrarian change and the governance of environment and sustainability. His fieldwork has taken him to more than 20 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Kristine Joy Chua
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, College of Arts and Letters
Chua is the Director of the Reproductive Biology and Evolution Laboratory at Notre Dame. Her research combines evolutionary and biocultural anthropology perspectives to understand how chronic stress “gets under the skin” during pregnancy. She utilizes methods from anthropology, biology, and public health to explore the social and biological factors that create and sustain peri- and postnatal inequities. She also studies the role that cultural practices play in shaping health norms. Chua works closely with pregnant women in the Philippines and the U.S.
Saurja DasGupta
Assistant Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry; Concurrent Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences
DasGupta leads a research lab dedicated to the hidden potential of Ribonucleic Acid (RNA), which plays a crucial role in biology, and its significance continues to grow as new discoveries are made. His lab investigates the Origins of Life, using a holistic exploration of RNA from multiple perspectives. The aim is to create synthetic models of the earliest cells that exhibit life behaviors, such as growth, division, competition, and ultimately, Darwinian evolution, to understand how life emerged from non-living matter.
Amy Hsin
Professor of Migration, Keough School of Global Affairs
A sociologist and social demographer, Hsin researches the intersection of immigration, race and ethnicity, education and social inequality in the United States. Her work examines how structural forces — such as immigration policy, immigration status, racial stratification and economic inequality — shape educational outcomes, labor market trajectories and family life. Drawing on both quantitative and qualitative methods, Hsin’s research illuminates how individuals navigate institutions that reproduce inequality and how these dynamics vary by race, immigration status, and social class.
Dahjin Kim
Assistant Professor of Asian Studies and Global Affairs
Kim's research examines political communication in online environments, with a particular focus on misinformation and its correction within online communities. Her dissertation investigates how leveraging online group identities can enhance the effectiveness of misinformation corrections among community members. More broadly, her work explores elite communication behaviors and public opinion on social media.
Nosang Myung
Bernard Keating-Crawford Professor of Engineering
Myung’s research focuses on the synthesis of nanoengineered materials and their applications, including spintronics, sensors, electronics, optoelectronics, energy harvesting, and environmental remediation. His research group’s objective is to control nanoscale-sized features to enhance material properties and device functions beyond those currently known.
Joseph Parent
Professor of Political Science
Parent’s research examines how shifts in power affect cooperation. He is the author of Uniting States (Oxford, 2011), and coauthor (with Joe Uscinski) of American Conspiracy Theories (Oxford, 2014) and (with Paul MacDonald) Twilight of the Titans (Cornell, 2018). He has published in the American Journal of Psychology, Foreign Affairs, History of Political Thought, International Security, Security Studies, Sociological Theory, and World Politics, assisted the National Intelligence Council on its Global Trends 2030 and Global Trends 2035 reports, and received a Fulbright fellowship in Rome and a Nobel Fellowship in Oslo.
Emily Wang
Associate Professor of Slavic and Eurasian Studies, College of Arts and Letters
Wang’s research focuses on Russian literature (especially poetry) and its relation to broader social trends, including the formation of intellectual and emotional communities, the intersection between politics and literature, and questions of racial and national identity.
Joanna Lin Want
Associate Teaching Professor, University Writing Program
Want’s scholarship focuses on the voices and experiences of military students (veterans and active military) in their college composition courses and considers how their insights might contribute to the development of postsecondary writing pedagogy. Her academic interests include composition and creative writing pedagogy, rhetorical genre studies, veteran studies, and the practice of hospitality in educational contexts.
Achievements and Awards
Danny Chen elected AAAS fellow
Danny Chen, professor of computer science and engineering, was recently elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a lifetime honor by one of the world’s largest multidisciplinary scientific societies.
Ming Hu wins AIA/ASCA Practice and Leadership Award
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) honored architecture professor Ming Hu with the 2026 Practice and Leadership Award. This national recognition honors exemplary teaching, scholarship, and outreach.
Provost's All-Faculty Team: Lakshmi Iyer
Lakshmi Iyer, professor of economics and global affairs and director of the Building Inclusive Growth (BIG) Lab, was honored during the September 13, 2025, home football game for her work on poverty, policy, and human development.
Eun-Young Julia Kim to lead CSLC
The Center for the Study of Languages and Cultures (CSLC) announced that Eun-Young Julia Kim will serve as its next director. She brings over two decades of expertise in applied linguistics and language pedagogy to this leadership role.
Three Liu faculty fellows win Franco fellowships
Liam Kruger, assistant professor of English, Emily Wang, associate professor of Slavic and Eurasian Studies, and Xueying Wang, assistant professor of theology, received faculty fellowships from the Franco Family Institute for Liberal Arts and the Public Good.
Three Liu Faculty Fellows win Keough School Awards
Iris Ma, assistant dean of experiential learning and associate teaching professor, received the Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award; Yong Suk Lee, associate professor of technology, economy and global affairs, received the Excellence in Master of Global Affairs (MGA) Teaching Award, and Santosh Kumar Gautam, professor of development and global health economics and director of both the masters and doctoral program in sustainable development received the Dean's Faculty Award for their outstanding contributions to the Keough School of Global Affairs during the 2025–26 academic year.
Michel Hockx wins Institute for Advanced Study fellowship
Michel Hockx, professor of Chinese literature and departing director of the Liu Institute, will spend the 2026–27 academic year at the IAS campus in Princeton, New Jersey, working on his next book, tentatively titled “Modern Chinese Writers and Their Travel Agents.”
Kyle Jaros named Liu Institute interim director
Kyle Jaros, associate professor of global affairs, will serve as interim director of the Liu Institute, following Michel Hockx, the institute's inaugural director, whose directorship ends June 30. A political scientist, Jaros researches urban development and subnational governance in China, as well as Asia more broadly.
Faculty Books
In November, the Liu Institute cosponsored a book launch and discussion panel for "Türkiye, Iran, and the Politics of Comparison: America's Wife, America's Concubine" (Cambridge University Press), authored by Perin E. Gürel, associate professor of American Studies with a concurrent position in the Gender Studies Program. The book examines the transnational history of comparisons between Türkiye and Iran from Cold War-era modernization theory to post-9/11 studies of 'moderate Islam'.
"Layleh and the Language of Birds" (Wilding Press) was launched during the spring semester with an event partnered with the Gender Studies Program and the Liu Institute's Southwest Asia and Northwest Africa (SWANA) Working Group. Winner of the 2025 A. Orr Fantasy Award, the book is a young-adult eco-fantasy feminist retelling of the twelfth-century Sufi legend, "The Conference of the Birds."
Michel Hockx, professor of Chinese literature and outgoing director of the Liu Institute, published "Literature and Censorship in Modern China" (Routledge Press) in March 2026. Studying literary censorship in China from 1900 to the present and by placing censorship of Chinese literature in relation to recent censorship theory, Hockx offers readers a more informed understanding of censorship as an “imposition of form,” not only in China but around the world.
According to the publisher, he "identifies the connections between censorship before and after the communist victory of 1949, between political censorship and moral (obscenity) censorship, and between print censorship and internet censorship. He assesses the oversimplified representation of Chinese censorship in American and European discourses, showing that it is a form of censorship in itself, which discredits or silences Chinese writers and artists who refuse to be dissidents. Hockx features interactions between authors, publishers, and censors, capturing the 'gray zone' in which creativity and control converge in ways that are more complex than usually imagined."
Promotions
Congratulations to the eleven Liu Institute faculty fellows who received promotions from the Office of the Provost in May 2026.
Top Row
Santosh Kumar Guatam, Keough School of Global Affairs, and Ming Hu, School of Architecture, promoted to professor
Naoki Fuse, East Asian Languages and Cultures, and Whitney Lew James, University Writing Program, promoted to associate teaching professor
Middle Row
Jennifer Huynh, American Studies, Xian Wang, East Asian Languages and Cultures, and Michael Zhao, Philosophy, promoted to associate professor with tenure
Bottom Row
Eric Haanstad, Anthropology, and Nikhit D'Sa, Institute for Educational Initiatives, promoted to professor of the practice
Lionel M. Jensen, East Asian Languages and Cultures, and Nelson C. Mark, Economics, promoted to emeritus
In Memoriam
Liu Institute emeritus fellow Peter R. Moody Jr. passed away on May 2, 2026. We are grateful for his contributions to Asian Studies at Notre Dame. A political scientist, Moody was an expert in modern Chinese politics and comparative politics of East Asia. He served as Book Review Editor for The Review of Politics from 1994 to 2014.