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CEAPS Graduate Student Travel Grant Application
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The Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies (CEAPS) Graduate Student Travel Grant provides travel awards for graduate students to present papers at professional conferences or to conduct dissertation research in East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the greater Pacific region. Priority will be given to those proposals that concern East Asian and Pacific issues. The number of awards is determined each year based on funding availability. 

Conference Travel

For AY 2023-2024, at least 8 awards (up to $600 for domestic travel/up to $1,000 for international travel) will be granted per semester. Paper acceptance at the time of application is required.

Dissertation Research Travel

For AY 2023-2024, 1 award (up to $2,000) will be granted per semester to a doctoral student conducting fieldwork research in East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the greater Pacific region for periods up to 12 months.

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Eligibility

Applicants must be registered full-time and in good academic standing during the term the award is received. Students in non-degree, online, cost-recovery, and self-supporting programs are ineligible.

Applicants may receive only one Conference Travel Award and one Dissertation Research Travel Award per academic year. The past recipients may reapply; however, the priority will be given to new applicants.

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Application Requirements

Conference Travel Grant

Dissertation Research Travel Grant

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Application Review/Deadlines

Applications are reviewed and approved semi-annually by the CEAPS Advisory Board. For conference travel, preference will be given to conference presentations with strong East Asian and Pacific Studies focus at national and international conferences. For dissertation travel, the board considers the necessity for travel, the significance, coherence, and feasibility of the proposed research as determined from the proposal. Doctoral students who are not able to conduct fieldwork oversea due to travel restrictions may request support to conduct research in the States.

Spring 2024 Competition

  • Submission Deadline: February 15, 2024 (11:59 pm CT)
  • Award Notification: March 2024
  • Travel Period: The proposed travel should take place during the 12 months following the award. Retroactive funding will NOT be considered. The dates of travel must occur after the results release date.

Spring 2024 CEAPS Graduate Student Conference Travel Grant Application Form

Spring 2024 CEAPS Graduate Student Dissertation Research Grant Application Form

Faculty Recommendation Form

Fall 2024 Competition

  • Submission Deadline: TBD
  • Award Notification: November 2024
  • Travel Period: The proposed travel should take place during the 12 months following the award. Retroactive funding will NOT be considered. The dates of travel must occur after the results release date.

Application forms will be available in 2024.

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Award Payment

Awards will be offered as reimbursement for travel. Allowable expenses include air travel, lodging, ground transportation, and other travel-related expenses for the awardee only. Awardees are required to submit original receipts supporting travel expenses to CEAPS for reimbursement within one month after travel has concluded.

Campus policy requires students traveling under University sponsorship overseas to enroll in University-approved International Insurance through campus International Safety and Security Office. See Illinois International Safety and Security website for details.

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Questions

Please direct all questions to CEAPS Associate Director Yuchia Chang at yuchia@illinois.edu

Spring 2023 Awardees

CEAPS Graduate Student Conference Research Travel Grant Spring 2023 Awardees

Myung Jung Kim

 

Myung Jung Kim is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at UIUC. Her research addresses topics at the intersection of conflict, international law, and transitional justice.  Her research broadly is guided by the question of what decides the intricate balance of peace and justice and how it is achieved. Prior to the doctoral program, she worked as a researcher at the Korea Institute of National Unification. She also holds an M.A. from Johns Hopkins SAIS and a B.A. from Purdue University.

 

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Katherine Kwak

 

Katherine (Seung Ah) Kwak is a Linguistics PhD student and a Korean teaching assistant at UIUC. She specializes in psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and heritage language acquisition. Specifically, Katherine is interested in how Korean heritage speakers process Korean sentences using psycholinguistic methods. With the CEAPS travel award, she will be presenting a linguistics research study at the 26th Annual Conference of the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages. This pilot study explores Korean learners' feelings toward the use of Korean folktales in the classroom. Upon completion of the PhD in Linguistics, Katherine hopes to pursue an academic career.

 

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Lingyan Liu

 

Lingyan Liu is a PhD candidate in the History Department. Born and raised in China, she got her BA in Opera, Film, and Literature and MA in Chinese Modern Literature. She is currently working on a dissertation provisionally titled That Hideous Sound: Singing, Shouting and Shrilling of Chinese and Chinese Americans, 1850s-1930s, which explores sonic stigmas attached to Chinese people and Chinese soundscapes. She investigates how the sounds of Chinese labors, street hawkers, opera performers, and festival firecrackers were historically constructed as unnatural, unpleasant, jarring, and monstrous. Her research is funded by the Humanities Research Institute this academic year.

 

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Lucie Lu

 

I am a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I study international relations with a regional focus on China. My research delves into China’s global influences in three international regimes: media, human rights and foreign aid. I observe China is adept at using innovative propaganda strategies to improve the public’s perceptions of home government performances. I also discover that China’s subtle approach to shaping human rights norms, leading to greater receptiveness to their perspectives in the Global South than we expected. Finally, my research shows that China is skillful at using overseas development to extend its influence over recipient countries.

 

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Kyoko Sawada

 

Kyoko is a 2nd year MA Student in the department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Their major area of interest is Japanese pedagogy, with general research interests in Japanese linguistics and Japanese aesthetics. They work as a graduate assistant with the Center of East Asian and Pacific Studies. Their interests include Japanese pedagogy and aesthetics.

 

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Yuefan Wang is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. Her interdisciplinary dissertation is about gender and garden literature from 16th- to 19-centuries China. She has presented her research at several international conferences such as AAS, AAS-in-Asia, ACCL, MLA, and ASECS. She has also published in both English and Chinese journals, such as Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture, Prism: Theory and Chinese Modern Literature, 文學 (Literature), 闡釋學學刊 (Journal of Hermeneutics), etc.  

 

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CEAPS Graduate Student Dissertation Research Travel Grant Spring 2023 Awardees          

 

Arya Budi

 

Arya Budi is a Ph.D. student in Political Science. The mass public's growing behavioral and attitudinal excesses in favoring a political leader motivate him to investigate the origins of presidential identification. By conducting a cross-national study and closely examining the case of Indonesia, Arya is familiar with electoral studies through multiple approaches. Before coming to Illinois, he was a research manager, a Jakarta-based pollster, and a researcher at Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia. He was also a fellow at Electoral Integrity Project and Global South Academic Network. He has published his works in several academic outlets and op-eds.