Core
Shelly Chan
Shelly Chan is the P.I. of the Transnational China Research Hub. She is a historian of modern China and the Chinese diaspora and the author of Diaspora’s Homeland: Modern China in the Age of Global Migration (Duke 2018). Her current research focuses on the rise of the Nanyang (“South Seas”) as a diasporic and oceanic borderland from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, bringing together the coastal histories of China and Southeast Asia. She is a member of the Board of Editors for The American Historical Review.
Ben Read
Ben Read is a Co-PI of the Transnational China Research Hub. He is professor and chair of Politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His research has focused on local politics in mainland China and Taiwan, and he also writes about issues in field research and comparison. He is author of Roots of the State: Neighborhood Organization and Social Networks in Beijing and Taipei (Stanford, 2012), coauthor of Field Research in Political Science: Practices and Principles (Cambridge, 2015), and coeditor of Local Organizations and Urban Governance in East and Southeast Asia: Straddling State and Society (Routledge, 2009). His work has appeared in journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, the China Journal, the China Quarterly, and the Washington Quarterly, as well as several edited books. He co-edits the Cambridge Elements series in Politics and Society in East Asia
Yiman Wang
Yiman Wang is a Co-PI of the Transnational China Research Hub. She is Professor of Film & Digital Media and Kenneth R. Corday Family Presidential Chair in Writing for Television & Film (2022-2025) at University of California, Santa Cruz. She is author of Remaking Chinese Cinema: Through the Prism of Shanghai, Hong Kong and Hollywood (2013). Her monograph on Anna May Wong, the pioneer Chinese American screen-stage-television performer, is forthcoming.
She is co-editor of the Global East Asian Screen Cultures book series published by Bloomsbury, and has published numerous articles in journals and edited volumes on topics of Chinese cinema, independent documentary, ethnic border-crossing stardom, ecocinema, film remakes and adaptation. She was an NEH recipient (2019-2020).
Affiliates
Christopher Connery
Christopher Connery is Professor of Literature and History of Consciousness. He has published on early imperial Chinese culture and society, the global 1960s, oceanic thinking and capitalism, contemporary Chinese political culture and theory, and contemporary Chinese theater. He is currently working on a book project entitled Grass Stage: Society, Culture, and Politics during China’s WTO Years
Sarah Chang
Sarah Chang is a Ph.D. candidate in modern Chinese history at UC Santa Cruz. Her dissertation focuses on the politics of space in China’s state-owned factories from the 1950s to the present. In addition to her work on PRC (People’s Republic of China) history, Sarah is broadly interested in transnational histories of China and Asian American studies.
Evelyn Char
Evelyn Char is currently a PhD student in the Visual Studies program of University of California, Santa Cruz. She is interested in contemporary art and visual culture in East and Southeast Asia, colonial histories, borderlands, and minoritarian cultures. Prior to joining UCSC, she was a Hong Kong-based art critic and lecturer, and has published widely on Hong Kong and East Asian art and visual culture.
Jonathan van Harmelen
Jonathan van Harmelen is a PhD candidate in history. He is a specialist in U.S. history, with a focus on Congress, U.S. immigration policy, and Asian American history. He is writing his dissertation on the role of Congress in the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, and postwar civil rights legislation for Japanese Americans. He also studies transnational U.S. history and international views of American race relations.
Ania Gricuk
Ania is a first year PhD student in the History department working with Prof Shelly Chan. She is interested in modern, diasporic, and transnational Chinese history. More specifically, she hopes to research the history of written correspondence between the Chinese diaspora and communities in China. She previously studied at SOAS, University of London, Beijing Normal University, and the London School of Economics. Her past research has centered around remittances and migration networks in the Chinese diaspora. She is fluent in English, Polish, French, Mandarin and has intermediate knowledge of Cantonese.
Yannong He
Yannong He is a Ph.D. candidate in the Politics Department at UCSC. Her research interests are immigration politics and local politics with a regional focus on East Asia. Her ongoing dissertation project examines how local governments in China engage in the global race for talent.
Xiao Li
Xiao Li is a digital humanist at the humanities computing services of the Humanities Division. Her research interest is in digital humanities and Chinese diasporas to Americas with a focus on gender and medicine. She was the digital humanities specialist of Phillips Academy Andover, building an online archive “Chinese Students at Andover 1878-2000” to archive the Chinese students in the school’s history and exhibit rich and important education and migration history of the U.S. that shaped Chinese modernity, Sino-U.S. relations and history of Asians in America. Her current book project, a revision of her doctoral dissertation, focuses on Yamei Kin (1864-1934), the first Chinese woman who obtained a college degree and medical degree in the United States.
Joshua Tan
Joshua Tan is a doctoral candidate in History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His ongoing dissertation project focuses on the Chinese diaspora during the Cold War, particularly the role of Chinese, British and American state and non-state actors (missionaries, philanthropic foundations, educational institutions) in sponsoring educational and cultural work among Chinese students in Cold War Asia. Broader interests include: transnational, global and “Worlded” histories of modern China/Asia, migration, and missionaries.