Faculty & Researchers

Brian Baumann

Research Interest: Mongolian language, history, culture, Buddhism, and astral science

Department: East Asian Languages and Cultures

Adam Benkato

Research Interests: Old and Middle Iranian languages, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Arabic dialectology, sociolinguistics, philology, Libyan Studies, archives

Department: Middle Eastern Languages & Cultures

Patricia Berger

Research Interests: Chinese art; Buddhist painting; portraiture in 20th-century China & Inner Asia

Department: History of Art

Franck Billé

Research Interests: Ethnicity, borders, territoriality, sovereignty, Northeast Asia

Tang Center for Silk Road Studies, Program Director

Sharad Chari

Research Interests: Ocean Worlds, Globalization, Earth-writing

Department: Geography

Jacob Dalton

Research Interests: Nyingma religious history; tantric ritual; paleography; Dunhuang manuscripts

Department: East Asian Languages and Culture

Penelope Edwards

Research Interests: Cultural Pasts and Presents in Southeast Asia, Focus on Cambodia and Burma

Department: South and Southeast Asian Studies

Deniz Ekici

Research Interests: Language variation and the role of language in nation-building process, language acquisition, cultural studies, technology in teaching and learning, sociolinguistics, identity formation, nationalism, state formation and linguistics/linguistic human rights

Department: Center for Middle Eastern Studies

Tom Gold

Research Interests: Chinese civil society; entrepreneurship; modernization and development; globalization social change in Taiwan

Department: Sociology

Nelson Graburn

Research Interests: Tourism, Heritage, Museums, Art, Multiculturalism in Japan, China and N. North America, Eastern Europe

Department: Anthropology 

Jun Hu

Research Interests: Chinese art and architecture

Department: History of Art

Lester Hu

Research Interests: global history of music during the so-called early modern period;  popular songs, operas, tunings, and musical thoughts in Europe and East and Inner Asia and the trans-Eurasian networks of people, goods, and knowledge; developing new methodologies for comparative and global music histories.

Department: Music

You-Tien Hsing

Research Interests: Geography of development in East Asia; Economic development in China; Political development in East Asia

Department: Geography

Stephen Lee

Research Interests: Literature in English: Mid-19th Through the 20th Century; Comintern Modernisms; Black Internationalism; Literature and Revolution

Department: English

Sanjyot Mehendale

Research Interests: Central Asian and Silk Road Art and Archeology

Tang Center for Silk Road Studies, Chair

East Asian Languages and Culture, South and South East Asian Studies, Lecturer

Michael Nylan

Research Interests: Han history; early intellectual history; Chinese art and archaeology

Department: History

Aihwa Ong

Research Interests: Sovereignty; government; migration, citizenship; neoliberalism; biotechnology; cities; knowledge class; modern ethics contemporary publics; Southeast Asia

Department: Anthropology 

Liladhar Pendse

Research Interests: Central Asia, Russia, Mongolia

Townsend Center for the Humanities, Library Fellow

David Roland-Holst

Research Interests: Economics of global warming; pro-poor livestock policy and highly pathogenic avian influenza; regional economic development in China

Department: Agricultural and Resource Economics 

Robert Sharf

Research Interests: Research interests: Buddhism; Chan and Zen; East Asian Tantra; Chinese and Japanese Religion; Theory and Method in the Study of Religion

Department: East Asian Languages and Cultures, South and South East Asian Studies

Yuri Slezkine

Research interests: Russian and Soviet history

Department: History

Stacey Van Vleet

Stacey Van Vleet Research Interests: Tibet, Inner Asia, Buddhism, historiography, medicine

Department: History

Jason Vivrette

Research Interests: Turkish language pedagogy, Middle Eastern cinema, translation studies, and literature produced in various intercultural contact zones at the limits of Turkish influence

Department: Center for Middle Eastern Studies