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Blog
Meet the faculty who joined APSI in 2025–26
Jiawei Fu—Assistant Professor of Political Science
Professor Fu's research primarily focuses on quantitative methods—including experimental design, causal mechanism/ inference, and computational methods—as well as formal theory. He is especially interested in incorporating mathematical models of human behavior, such as game-theoretic models and social-choice theory, into his methodological research. His substantive research explores the political economy of non-democracy, with a particular emphasis on bureaucracy, mental health, and institutions in China.
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Engseng Ho—Professor of Cultural Anthropology
Professor Ho is a specialist on Arab/Muslim diasporas across the Indian Ocean, and their relations with western empires, past and present. He has been involved in the Inter-Asia collaborations among the Social Science Research Council, NUS, Hong Kong University, Gottingen University and others since 2008, including the SSRC Inter-Asia postdoctoral fellowships programme. His writings include The Graves of Tarim, Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean, and Empire through Diasporic Eyes: A View from the Other Boat.
Read about Professor Ho’s work tracing transnational exchanges >>
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Sung Eun Kim—Assistant Professor of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies
Kim is an interdisciplinary historian of modern Korea whose research focuses on the racial and sexual politics of colonial soldiering at the intersections of transnational Korean militarism and U.S. imperialism in the Asia-Pacific region. His book manuscript, Augmenting Empire: Race, Gender, and the Making of KATUSA under U.S. Military Empire, 1945–2021, offers a critical history of the Korean Augmentation Troops to the U.S. Army (KATUSA), a unit of South Korean soldiers that have been conscripted into the U.S. Army in Korea from 1950 to the present. Drawing from the fields of Korean studies, critical race and gender studies, and U.S. war and empire studies, his research pioneers new frameworks for understanding U.S.–ROK relations and advances theoretical, transnational, and interdisciplinary approaches to U.S. colonialism in Korea and the Asia-Pacific.
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Kimberly Marion Suiseeya—Associate Professor in the Division of Environmental Social Systems
Professor Marion Suiseeya is an environmental social scientist with expertise in environmental justice, global environmental politics, Indigenous politics, and community-driven research. Her research examines how Indigenous communities shape and are impacted by multilateral environmental agreements like the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity. She is also an experienced policy practitioner who has worked and conducted research in Guyana, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, and the US. Her research is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
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Marguerite B. Nguyen—Associate Professor of English
Professor Nguyen’s research and teaching cover American literature, Asian American literature, Vietnamese diasporic studies, critical refugee studies, and ecocriticism. She is author of America's Vietnam: The Longue Durée of US Literature and Empire (Temple University Press, 2018) and co-editor of Refugee Cultures: Forty Years after the Vietnam War (MELUS Special Issue, 2016). Her current project, Refugee Ecologies, explores local-global understandings of the environment among Vietnamese refugee communities in New Orleans.
Read about the ways in which Professor Nguyen roots her scholarship in her refugee experience >>
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Clara Park—Senior Research Scientist
Dr. Park studies international trade and finance, climate change, and the US foreign economic policy in the Asia-Pacific region. Her first book, Making Financial Globalization: How Firms Shape International Regulatory Cooperation (Oxford University Press, 2024), examines the interaction of business and politics in financial globalization. Her next book projects on climate change include : (1) The Political Economy of Climate Change, and (2) The Geopolitics of Critical Minerals Supply Chain (with Kyle Beardsley and Pei-Yu Wei), which is under contract with Cambridge University Press: Elements in Globalization and Supply Chain Series.
Learn more about Dr. Park on her website >>
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Richard Jean So—Michael G. Rhodes and Maureen C. Rhodes Associate Professor in the Digital Humanities
Professor So’s work bridges the humanities and data science. He uses computational methods and AI to study culture and explores how cultural insight and critical theory can help shape more ethical and meaningful AI systems. His research appears in leading humanities journals such as PMLA and Critical Inquiry, as well as in scientific venues like ACL and PNAS. He also writes for broader audiences, with recent essays in The New York Times and The Atlantic.
Read about how Professor So is charting new territories in digital humanities >>
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Jonathan (Cat) Tran—Professor of Theological Ethics
Professor Tran is a Christian theologian focused on the philosophical, political and ethical implications of the human life in language. His specific areas of research and teaching are Christian theology and ethics, ordinary language philosophy, Asian American studies, political theory, social and critical theory and bioethics. At Duke, he serves on the Theology faculty of the Divinity School and as Core Faculty for Asian American and Diaspora Studies. He is author most recently of Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism (OUP, 2022). Currently he is co-authoring with Vincent Lloyd Race and Christianity (CUP, 2027) and with Stanley Hauerwas Christianity and the Promise of Politics (CUP, 2027). He co-edits with Alda Balthrop-Lewis the book series "Reflection and Theory in the Study of Religion" for Oxford University Press/American Academy of Religion.