PhD Candidate
East Asia: China
I am a Ph.D. candidate in the History department at the University of California, Berkeley. I am broadly interested in twentieth-century transnational East Asian history, with a particular geographic interest in Taiwan. My research examines the connections between ethnic identity formation, settlement patterns, and the built and natural environment in post-1945 Taiwan. Specifically, I trace two interrelated trajectories: (1) the Japanese infrastructural legacies inherited by the Kuomintang government in 1945 and their subsequent continuation, and (2) the community formation and settlement patterns of mainland migrants, who arrived in Taiwan en masse after 1949. I am particularly interested in the complex relationship between the Kuomintang state and these migrants, most of whom initially settled in urban areas, leading to a massive housing and resource shortage. In response, the state carried out infrastructure, housing, and land development projects around the island, which had a variety of unforeseen social and environmental consequences. My goal is to explore how the migrant crisis informed state policies, including how urban population problems affected Taiwan's land reform campaigns, and how military and veteran laborers helped shape Taiwan's built environment.
Research Interests
- Urbanization
- Housing and Property Law
- Land Development and Infrastructure
- Ethnicity
- Identity Formation
- Cold War History
Awards & Fellowships
Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, 2025
UC Berkeley Center for Chinese Studies Republic of China East Asian Fellowship, 2024
Esherick-Ye Family Foundation Grant, 2024
FLAS Summer Language Fellowship (French), 2023
UC Berkeley Social Science Matrix Communications Fellowship, 2023
FLAS Academic Year Language Fellowship (Advanced Japanese), 2022-23
EAJPC Judges Recommendation Award for Junior Researchers, 2021
Remembering Taiwan's Martial Law Conference, Best PhD Paper Prize, Australian National University, 2021
T.T. and W.F. Chao Scholars Fellowship, 2020 - present
Dean’s Scholarship, University of Chicago, 2018-2019
Bernard Peyton Chamberlain Memorial Prize, University of Virginia, 2017
Harrison Undergraduate Research Award, 2016
Presentations
“The Art of the Squat: Politics of Illegal Occupancy in Urban Taiwan, 1950-1972”, at the "Changing Places: Spatial Dynamics and Knowledge Production in Modern China” conference, UC Berkeley, May 2024
"View from the Bamboo Fence: Remembering Kuomintang Statecraft through Taiwan’s Juancun," Remembering Taiwan's Martial Law Conference, Australian National University, Canberra (virtual), July 2021
"Games of Empire: The Sportive Heritage of Japanese Taiwan," East Asian Popular Culture Conference, Taipei, Taiwan (virtual), January 2021
"Game of Empire: Baseball, Assimilation, and Representations of Japanese Taiwan," Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs at Michigan State University, East Lansing, October 2019
"Modern Games for a Model Colony: Assimilation by Baseball in Colonial Taiwan, 1895-1937," MAPSS Graduate Research Conference, the University of Chicago, Chicago, May 2019
Publications
"Mapping the Los Angeles Ethnoburbs: An Interview with Margaret Crawford," Social Science Matrix, University of California, Berkeley. Nov. 8, 2023. URL: https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/mapping-the-los-angeles-eth...
