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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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.