The Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies approved seven new faculty fellows during the fall 2020 semester. The scholars examine Asia and Asia-related topics from a range of colleges, schools, and departments at Notre Dame.
Perin Gürel
Assistant Professor of American Studies
& Concurrent Assistant Professor of Gender Studies
Gürel’s research explores the United States in the world and the world in the United States through transnational feminist lenses, with special focus on U.S.-Middle East relations and Islam in the US after World War I. She earned a PhD in American Studies and a graduate qualification in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Yale University.
Kyle Jaros
Associate Professor of Global Affairs
& Concurrent Associate Professor of Political Science
Jaros’s research explores the politics of regional development, central-local relations, and metropolitan governance with a focus on China. He earned a PhD and MA in political science from the Department of Government at Harvard University. He holds a graduate certificate in Chinese studies from the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies.
Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi
Associate Professor of English
& Concurrent Faculty, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
Oloomi specializes in fiction and non-fiction writing, literatures of exile and resistance, memory studies, space studies, Middle Eastern literature, Latin American and Iberian literature, American literature, postcolonial theory, and ethics and aesthetics of the novel. She won the 2019 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her novel Call Me Zebra. She received an MFA from Brown University.
John Onyango
Associate Professor of Architecture
Onyango’s research focuses on sustainability that takes holistic approaches to the creative practices at the building and urban design levels that are interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary. He holds a PhD in architecture from the University of Glasgow, a master of Architecture from Notre Dame, and a certificate in professional practice & management in architecture from the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London.
R. Trent Pomplun
Associate Professor of Theology
Pomplun’s expertise extends from late medieval to modern thought, with emphasis on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He has published on the history of scholastic theology, Catholic missions in Asia, and Indo-Tibetan religion and culture. He is chiefly absorbed in the study of Ippolito Desideri. He holds a PhD from the University of Virginia.
Sharon Yoon
Assistant Professor of Korean Studies
Yoon is an ethnographer who has conducted fieldwork in Korean diasporic communities in Seoul, Beijing, and Osaka. She has analyzed how the rise of transnationalism has affected the lives of Korean migrants searching for wealth and stability in Beijing’s Korean enclave and postcolonial Korean social activists in Osaka between 2013 and 2015.
Mike Zhao
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Zhao works mainly in ethics with interests in social and political philosophy, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, and ancient Chinese philosophy. He received a PhD from New York University.