The mission of the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, part of the Keough School of Global Affairs, is to provide a forum for integrated and multidisciplinary research and teaching on Asia and its diaspora. The Liu Institute supports innovative projects that actively combine teaching, research, and social engagement, creating a unique model of rounded education on Asia. The Institute also promotes general awareness, understanding, and knowledge of Asia and its diaspora through organizing public events and supporting student and faculty scholarship and engagement with partners in Asia.
To pursue its mission, the 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—who not only teach Asian studies courses from a variety of disciplines, but also engage in Asia-related research, often inviting students to join them as collaborators.
This year, the institute welcomes nine new faculty fellows during the 2025-26 academic year.
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.