Faculty
Our Faculty by Region
Featured Faculty
China
Name |
Department |
Specialty |
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World Languages and Cultures |
Chinese language, linguistics |
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Eccles School of Business |
Diplomatic and voluntary assistance in China during Second World War, transnational approach to examine collaboration between the UK and the USA during the Second World War |
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Communication |
Environmental activism in China, rhetoric of social movements |
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Geography and Environmental and Sustainability Studies |
Development, political ecology, land and resource politics, critical geopolitics, infrastructure, China, Southeast Asia, Laos, Tibet, Nepal |
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Family and Consumer Studies |
Household saving/borrowing and financial management, household expenditures and the impact of government, and international comparison of consumer behavior |
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Philosophy |
Political philosophy, ethics and virtue in Confucianism |
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Art and Art History |
Art history, Buddhist art of Asia, Buddhist visual culture of the Asian diaspora, and Buddhism inspired contemporary Asian art. |
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World Languages and Cultures |
China, Japanese Studies, East Asia, Asia n Medicine |
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Economics |
Asian economic development, the future of socialism and communism |
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Writing and Rhetoric Studies |
Comparative rhetoric, Asian/Asian American rhetoric, histories of rhetoric, Chinese rhetoric, and writing research in global spaces |
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World Languages and Cultures |
Classical Chinese poetry and comparative literature; literary theory and criticism, translation, and cultural studies |
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Communications |
Health communication, environmental activism, social network analysis, meta-science |
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History |
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History |
Gender and legal history of East Asia, environmental history in China, female suicide studies |
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World Languages and Cultures |
Chinese literature and culture of the late imperial period (Ming and Qing dynasties), especially vernacular literature, performance traditions, history of the book, cultural history, and legal culture. |
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Geography |
Global urban and regional development in China |
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Sociology |
Social determinants of health, medical sociology, migration in the US and China |
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Sociology |
Comparative Criminology/Criminal Justice, Policing, Marijuana Legalization and Public Safety |
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Family and Consumer Studies |
Housing economics among immigrants and in the urban context, homeownership, household formation, and housing markets in China |
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Fine Arts; Art and Art History |
Paintings manifest the psychological weight experienced in moments of turmoil and tribulations; In his oneiric narratives, melancholia is a familiar companion – overbearing landscapes and foreboding atmospheres suppress his lonely protagonists, obscuring the delineation of fantasy and reality; Conflating the styles of the East and the West |
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Hua Zhu
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Writing and Rhetoric Studies |
Comparative rhetoric, Chinese rhetoric, Non-Eurocentric history of rhetoric, transnational writing pedagogy |
Korea
Name |
Department |
Specialty |
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Communication |
Korean war; Narratives and memoirs with a focus on war and trauma |
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Political Science |
International relations of East Asia, political psychology and identity politics, behavioral decision-making |
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Psychology |
Psycho-Oncological Study for Cancer Patients and Family Caregivers; Measurement Scale Development for Mental Health of People with Severe Neurological Illness |
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Ballet |
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English |
Global/Transnational Literature, digital humanities |
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World Languages and Cultures |
Catholicism, Intellectual History |
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Political Science |
Public-NPO partnerships, NPO collaboration, leadership and management |
Japan
Name |
Department |
Specialty |
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World Languages and Cultures |
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World Languages and Cultures |
Japanese language |
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World Languages and Cultures |
Socio-phonetic phenomena and variation, first and second language phonology, Romance Languages in Contact Situations, Anthropological Linguistics |
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Sociology |
Social determinants of health, health disparities, minority and immigrant health, community-based research, and global health. |
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World Languages and Cultures |
Japanese language |
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World Languages and Cultures |
Japanese Studies, East Asia, Asian Medicine, China |
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Theater |
Buddhist Studies with an emphasis in ritual and meditation, movement systems including Butoh, Viewpoints, Noh Theatre, illusionary and corporeal mime, mask work, ballet and contemporary dance, Pilates, Laban/Barteneiff, and the martial arts of karate, kung fu, and tai chi |
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World Languages and Cultures |
Literature, history, and performance in classical and medieval Japan (10th through 15th centuries) |
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Film |
Japanese anime, Animation theory, Animation production, Digital Media |
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World Languages and Cultures |
Problem of representation (in its many senses) in writing by Koreans in the Japanese empire and its ongoing aftermath |
Russia / Central Asia
Name |
Department |
Specialty |
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World Languages |
Second-language learning, Russian language and cultural studies |
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World Languages and Cultures |
Russian language |
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College of Law |
International Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, National Security, Human Trafficking, International Labor Standards |
Southeast Asia
Name |
Department |
Specialty |
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Geography and Environmental and Sustainability Studies |
Development, political ecology, land and resource politics, critical geopolitics, infrastructure, China, Southeast Asia, Laos, Tibet, Nepal |
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World Languages and Cultures |
Vietnamese language |
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Sociology |
Migration, intergenerational relationships, population studies in developing countries; Southeast Asia |
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History |
Trade and economic developments in Southeast Asia, the period of the 1400s to the 19th century, global Islam |
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College of Social Work |
Mindfulness, immigration and resettlement, global social work practice and reflexive social work: diversity and social justice |
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World Languages and Cultures |
Vietnamese language |
South / Central Asia
Name |
Department |
Specialty |
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Environmental and Sustainability Studies |
International Relations, Energy and Environmental Politics, and Research Methods |
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Economics |
Applied microeconomics, environment and resources, psychology and gender; India |
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Geography and Environmental and Sustainability Studies |
Development, political ecology, land and resource politics, critical geopolitics, infrastructure, China, Southeast Asia, Laos, Tibet, Nepal |
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Economics |
Economics experiments to study human behavior in strategic settings, Behavioral Economics, Applied Game Theory |
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World Languages & Cultures |
Hindi, Urdu, and South Asian literature, (popular) culture, society and religion. History of the relationship between the Hindu majority and Muslim minority in South-Asia, with a focus on 20th and 21st-century India |
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History |
Modern Middle East,Ottoman Empire, Arabian Peninsula, Indian Ocean, Islamic World, Environmental History, Comparative Empire, Disease and Pandemics, Infrastructure,Water, Energy, Climate Change, Mobility (Pilgrimage, Travel, Tourism, Migration) |
m.chris.low@utah.edu | |
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Art and Art History
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Islamic and architecture, medieval art and architecture, book history, history of science and medicine, visual information technologies. |
meekyung.macmurdie@utah.edu |
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History |
History of Middle East 1798-1914, Middle East since 1914 |
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Family & Preventative Medicine |
Community Engagement, Malnutrition Among Children, Cultural and Gender Studies, Health and Legal Literacy, Adolescent Nutrition, Social Determinants of Health |
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Linguistics |
Formal semantics, historical linguistics/philology, syntax, morphology, computational linguistics, South Asian Languages and Literature |
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Division of Public Health |
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Division of Public Health |
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Architecture |
Urban History, Modern Islam, Imperialism, History of Architecture, Sound Studies, Media Studies in Art and Architecture, History of Globalization, Colonialism |
Asia Pacific
Name |
Department |
Specialty |
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College of Health |
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Anthropology |
Cultural evolution; migration patterns and cultural variations; Tongan diaspora |
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Parks, Recreation and Tourism |
Sustainable development, tourism and protected area management, visitor management, outdoor recreation management, natural resources and community management |
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Psychology |
Asian American
Name |
Department |
Specialty |
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Political Science, Ethnic Studies |
My research interests occupy the nexus between critical race studies, American political thought & development, and contemporary political theory. I seek to understand how discourses of race have synergized American politics in both its institutional and cultural aspects. Critical Race Theory, American Political Culture, American Political Thought |
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Ethnic Studies |
Labor, migration, violence, militarisms, sexual slavery and human trafficking, ethnic studies, sociolegal analysis with visual studies and social movement analysis |
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Political Science |
Urban and racial politics, voting and elections, cross-racial political analysis, and quantitative research methods |
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Communication |
Rhetoric and discourse, media and film; race, ethnic, and cultural studies |
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English |
Asian American Literature (Literature), Gender, Transnational identity |
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Education, Culture & Society |
Language ideologies and the social context of language education for emergent bilingual learners. In particular, critical race theory and raciolinguistic perspectives to explore how the larger sociopolitical contexts shape the experiences of language-minoritized communities. |
Comparative
Name |
Department |
Specialty |
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Division of Public Health |
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College of Law |
Public and private international law and related areas including: human rights; globalization; international business transactions and international economic law; colonialism and the history of public international law; Third World Approaches to International Law; the law of the United Nations; legal education in developing countries. |
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Environmental and Sustainability Studies |
International Relations, Energy and Environmental Politics, and Research Methods |
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History |
East Africa's interactions with social and economic networks of the Indian Ocean since the first millennium. My current project looks at the Swahili coast and western Indian Ocean from the perspective of small-scale societies that lived along the rural fringes of the port city of Mombasa. |
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History |
History of Brazil, history of science, comparative colonial history |
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English |
Colonial and postcolonial English literatures, minority discourse, postcolonial theory, James Joyce and Irish Studies |
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World Languages and Cultures |
Ethnography, Comparative Religion, Africa |
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Social Work |
Health of women and youth from refugee backgrounds |
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College of Law |
Environmental law in Latin America; Human rights in Latin America |
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College of Law |
Counterterrorism, Criminal Law, International Law |
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World Languages and Cultures |
Japanese Studies, East Asia, Asian medicine, China |
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Political Science |
Globalization, foreign policy and aid, international relations of Africa |
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Film |
Transnational Cinematic Identities, Middle East Cinema, Political Documentaries in the United States and Mexican cinema |
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Family & Preventative Medicine |
Community Engagement, Malnutrition Among Children, Cultural and Gender Studies, Health and Legal Literacy, Adolescent Nutrition, Social Determinants of Health |
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Hua Zhu |
Writing and Rhetoric Studies |
Comparative rhetoric, Chinese rhetoric, Non-Eurocentric history of rhetoric, transnational writing pedagogy |
Mia Hashibe
Department: Family & Preventive Medicine
Publications:
Hashibe M, Wei M, Lee CJ, Tao R, Koric A, Wang J, Daud A, Tay D, Shen J, Lee YA, Chang CE. Incident Cardiovascular Disease Risk among Older Asian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Breast Cancer Survivors. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2024 Jan 9;33(1):126-135. doi: 10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-23-0679. PMID: 37843411; PMCID: PMC10842246.
Eun Bin Chung
Department: Political Science
Publications:
- Chung, Eunbin (2023). “National Identity, Social Preferences, and Foreign Policy Attitudes: Experimental Evidence from Japan.” Foreign Policy Analysis 19 (2) orad005.
- Ki, Youn, and Chung, Eunbin, (2023). “Party Reputation, Moral Expectations, and Voting Behavior in South Korea.” Millennial Asia.
- Yi, Jaehee, Younce, Bobby, Chung, Eunbin, Kim, Min Ah, and Bradbury, Laura (2023). “Mothers’ Bereavement and Evolving Relationships with their Dead Child in South Korea.” Family Relations 1–16.
- Chung, Eunbin, Govindan, Pavitra, and Pechenkina, Anna (2023). “The effect of incentives on motivated numeracy amidst COVID-19.” Journal of Experimental Political Science 10, 311-327.
- Chung, Eunbin, Pechenkina, Anna, and Skinner, Kiron (2023). “Competitors in Aid: How International Rivalry Affects Public Support for COVID-19-Related Aid Under Various Frames.” Political Research Quarterly 76 (3) 1371-1387.
- Chung, Eunbin and Pechenkina, Anna (2023). “Testing the effects of group-affirmation in active conflict: Ukrainians’ trust toward Russia.” PLoS ONE 18 (5) e0270266.
- Chung, Eunbin, and Pechenkina, Anna (2023). “National Chauvinism, Group Identity Affirmation, and Trust in International Relations: Experimental Results from Ukraine.” Nationalities Papers 1–20.
- Chung, Eunbin, and Milkoreit, Manjana (2023). "Who are your people?–The effect of political ideology and social identity on climate-related beliefs and risk perceptions." Politics, Groups, and Identities 11(3): 467-487.
Awards:
- Francis D. Wormuth Early Career Faculty Award (2023), Department of Political Science, University of Utah Current research:
Kim Korinek
Department: Sociology
Publications:
Below are a couple of recent publications. My colleagues and I, spanning the US, Canada, Singapore, and Vietnam, are also happy to have conducted a dissemination meeting of the VHAS study with scholars and practitioners in the fields of older adult health and aging in Hanoi last July. Click here to read our dissemination report.
- Korinek, Kim, Zachary Zimmer, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, Yvette Young, Cao Long*, and Tranh Khanh Toan. 2024. “Cognitive Function in the Context of Early Life Wartime Stress Exposure: An Analysis of Cognitive Decline in a Cohort of Vietnamese Older Adults.” Accepted for publication, Social Science & Medicine, March 18, 2024
- Glass, Delaney J.*, Yvette M. Young, Toan Khanh Tran, Patrick Clarkin, and Kim Korinek. 2023. Weathering within war: Somatic health complaints among Vietnamese older adults exposed to bombing and violence as adolescents in the American war. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 165. 111080.
Kim Korinek and Bryce Garner led a successful workshop of the Mekong Region Development Research group last December at Mahidol University, Thailand. With the generous support of the Henry Luce Foundation, we created a mentorship program to support seven junior scholars from Southeast Asia in conducting data analysis and writing research manuscripts for peer-reviewed publication on the theme of Population and Health in Contexts of Conflict and Climate Change.
Gretchen Jude
Department: Film & Media Arts
Publications:
Yoshida Ami’s Onkyō and the Persistently "Japanese" Body: Making (Electro)voice Sound (article in special issue of Performance Matters (10:1), which I also co-edited and co-wrote the introduction) in (Re)sounding Bodies East and West: Embodied Engagements with Japanese Traditions
Dennis Wei
Department: Geography
Publications:
- Wu., Y. and Y.D. Wei. 2023. Regional Drinking Water Supply in Pakistan: Regional Disparity, Inequality, and Development Pattern. Professional Geographer 75(5): 733-749.
- Li, H. and Y.D. Wei. 2023. COVID-19, Cities and Inequality. Applied Geography 160: 103059.
- Wei, Y.D., Y. Wu, W. Xiao and X. Wu. 2023. Preferences and barriers of vulnerable urban populations in affordable housing in urban China. Journal of Urban Planning and Development 149(4): 05023030.
- Yuan, F., Y.D. Wei and W. Xiao. 2023. Urban space, mixed land use, and residential land prices: A case study of Nanjing, China. Professional Geographer 75(3): 481-493.
- Qin, X., Y.D. Wei, Y. Wu and X. Huang. 2023. Regional development and inequality within city regions: A Study of the Yangtze River Delta, China. Geographical Review 113(3): 359-385.
- Xiao, W., Y.D. 2023. Wei and W. Chen. Skills Mismatch, Jobs-housing Relationship and Urban Commuting. Travel Behaviour and Society 33: 100610.
- Yuan, F., W. Xiao and Y.D. Wei. 2023. Heterogeneous mechanisms of urban land price in China: A perspective of natural and strategic land supply. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 10: 163.
- Ma, H., Y.D. Wei, X. Huang and W. Zhang. 2023. The innovation networks shaped by large innovative enterprises in urban China. Journal of Geographical Sciences 33(3): 599- 617.
- Wang, J., Y.D. Wei and B. Lin. 2023. How social media affects PM2.5 levels in urban China? Geographical Review 113(1): 48-71.
- Liu, W. J. Shen and Y.D. Wei. 2023. Environmental regulation, border effect and location change of pollution-intensive enterprises in a transitional Chinese city. Journal of Environmental Management 325: 226501.
ShawnaKim Lowey-Ball
Department: History
Publications:
On the Perils of Parochialism: Reinterpreting the Magic Coins of Fifteenth-Century Java. Artibus Asiae. Vol. 83(2), 101-125.
Jessica DiCarlo
Department: Geography
Publications:
- DiCarlo, Jessica, Cory Combs & Raphael Debert. 2025. Fractured extraction: Mining firms, provinces, and municipalities in the decentralized politics of China’s rare earth production. The China Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741025101586
- DiCarlo, Jessica & Meredith DeBoom. 2025. Six paths of Global China: A genealogy of a contested geographical imaginary. Dialogues in Human Geography. https://doi.org/10.1177/20438206251345563
- DiCarlo, Jessica & Dinesh Paudel. Infrastructural polyalignment and Himalayan geopolitics: subjugation, small-state agency, and regional competition in Nepal. Third World Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2025.2522292
- DiCarlo, Jessica & David Fernando Bachrach. The corridor as commodity: Abstraction, legibility, and uneven development in Southeast Asian railway projects. Antipode 57(3): 930-952. https://www.doi.org/10.1111/anti.70014
- Bennett, Mia, Jessica DiCarlo & Sarah Elwood. The world from a bicycle: Cycling as kinesthetic methodology. Progress in Human Geography. https://doi.org/10.1177/03091325251369540
- Alami, Ilias, Jessica DiCarlo, Steve Rolf & Seth Schindler. 2025. The new frontline: The US-China battle for control of global networks. State of Power 2025: The Geopolitics of Capitalism. The Transnational Institute. https://www.tni.org/en/article/the-new-frontline
- Deberdt, Raphael, Jessica DiCarlo, and Hyeyoon Park. 2024. Standardizing “green” extractivism: Chinese & Western environmental, social, and governance instruments in the critical mineral sector. The Extractive Industries and Society, 19: 101516. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2024.101516
- Debert, Raphael and Jessica DiCarlo. Pericentricity on the Congolese Copperbelt: How the DRC Shapes Chinese Cobalt Supply Chains and the Low-Carbon Transition. Globalizations, 21(8): 1496-1517. https://www.doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2024.2374432
- Schindler, Seth, Ilias Alami, Jessica DiCarlo, Nick Jepson, Steve Rolf, et al. 2023. The Second Cold War: US-China competition for centrality in infrastructure, digital, production, and finance networks. Geopolitics, 29(4): 1083-1120. https://www.doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2023.2253432
Awards:
- 2023-25 Public Intellectuals Program (PIP) Fellow, National Committee on U.S.-China Relations
- 2023-24 Wilson China Fellow, The Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United States
- 2024 Outstanding Mentor & Advisor, Department of Geography, University of Utah
Lien Fan Shen
Department: Film & Media Arts
Publications:
“Sandsage: Prologue,” People, Fish, Poetry Magazine, Vol 15, 2023. An AI collaborated graphic novel, 8 pages. Taipei, Taiwan. Collaborators: ChatGPT, Bailey Boyce, Kristen Oliva.
Shoji Azuma
Department: World Languages & Cultures
Publications:
Azuma, Shoji. “Analyzing Japanese media representation of the Israel-hamas conflict: A linguistic study of online sources.” International Journal of Arts, Humanities & Social Science, vol. 05, no. 02, 12 Feb. 2024, pp. 1–12, https://ijahss.net/assets/files/1708079866.pdf.
