Current NYU Shanghai Global Research Initiatives Fellows

Synopsis of Research in Shanghai (May 27 - July 26) :

Zhenhuan Lei has three ongoing research projects on Chinese politics. The first one is about why Chinese cities have strong interests in building grand subway systems even if mayors cannot finish building subways in their terms; for which he argues that there is a political incentive behind it. In his second project, he finds that township governments in China used fiscal transfers to influence village officials but hurt villagers' welfare. Finally, he has a third project discussing how city mayors' political connections can help firms in their cities get listed in the Chinese stock market. Given the research focus of these projects are all China, Lei believes NYU Shanghai to be the best place to further his research projects. He knows Professor Eric Hundman at NYU Shanghai, who also studies Chinese politics. Professor Hundman, along with other scholars in leading universities in Shanghai, can give feedback to Lei on how to improve these research projects.

Synopsis of Research in Shanghai (May 27 - June 21) :

The Shanghai No. 3 Girl's High School is a historic and gothic treasure of Asia. Founded in 1892 by Methodist missionaries, the regal school now serves as a hallowed institution for China's daughters to receive a well-rounded education. Nancy Huang’s book, "Favorite Daughter," focuses on the school before the Cultural Revolution, back when it was the McTyeire Academy, and the determined young women who studied there. When Huang was younger, she lived in Shanghai and attended one of the three elite international schools in the city, and as a result is deeply familiar with life abroad, expat culture, Western-style schools in Asia, and the emotional realities of diaspora. As a Chinese-American woman, her youth in Shanghai was intimately connected to her upbringing in America. She recognizes that stories of diaspora aren't linear; they are circular, because there is always a return journey back to the Old Country through food, memory, or culture. In this way, Shanghai is a site of return and revival for her, and an essential component to this novel. Studies have repeatedly shown that countries with imbalanced sex ratios lead to women attending school at decreasing rates. In a country that is overwhelmingly male, Huang’s novel will draw real-world connections to the past and future. Confucius once said that an educated woman is a worthless woman, and China's culture is still intensely patriarchal; so following the lives and coded resistances of these young women is revelatory for her. In Shanghai, Huang will be operating under the legacy of writers like Jules Verne, Jenny Zhang, Lu Xun, Eileen Chang, and Isabel Sun, and she is dedicated to shining a light on a period when being a Chinese woman meant being cultivated to suffer.

Synopsis of Research in Shanghai (June 16 - July 7) :

William Godel researches comparative politics, social media, and methods in political science. He has extensive experience in China and speaking Chinese (3.5 years) and is interested in researching Chinese social media use. In particular, how Chinese social media and internet culture differs-- or is similar to-- Western paradigms. His dissertation also researches state formation, and he would like to research China's historical experience in state formation and identify it with contemporary Chinese administrative capacity. 

Synopsis of Research in Shanghai (May 27 - June 20) :

“Shanghai maps of light + shadow” will be an interactive city walk, created from photo-based digital ‘paintings’ and historic imagery mapped to Shanghai streets. It is a convergence of Professor Feist’s current mapping project on refugees in Greece, “the light and shadow” paintings series, and her own German heritage. She will trace her steps from modern Shanghai to the former Jewish quarter. Professor Feist will use today’s lit skyscrapers as in-camera ‘brushes’ on a way back 80 years to the shadows of the then-impoverished quarter of Shanghai that was the refuge of 20,000 Jews escaping the Germany of her grandparents. Today, it can be seen how the waves of war-ravaged refugees and people fleeing economic devastation tend to leave people numb to the humanity of those in most need. In “Shanghai maps of light + shadow” Professor Feist will use digitally altered photographic records mapped to street locations and brief narrative. She will use a camera as a visual journal to trace her steps and to serve as material for the resulting light paintings. The shadow paintings will be informed by her research on the exhibits and archives of the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum and connections to scholars or guides who can identify remaining sites of Jewish heritage in the old quarter. This project continues her Engaged Media series, specifically “Involuntary Journeys”, a blog and mapping project about individual refugees’ journeys to the Moria camp on Lesbos, Greece. The goal for both projects is to point to the shared humanity in an effort to overcome the dehumanizing effect of statistics. The empathy that saved 20,000 lives 80 years ago – however different the details were - could guide people in the approach to war refugees today, be they from civil war in Syria or a drug war in Guatemala.

Synopsis of Research in Shanghai (July 1 - July 26) :

Professor Li’s research focuses on the new field of epigenetics, which has transformed how people think about genomes. Epigenetics is the study of how heritable changes in organisms can be caused by the modification of gene expression, rather than alteration of the genetic code itself. Epigenetics can explain, for example, why all of the body’s cells contain the same DNA sequence, but bodies contain many different cell types. Indeed, epigenetic mechanisms play essential roles in many biological functions, including genome organization, development, and disease. Professor Li’s studies of epigenetics in a model organism, fission yeast (Schizosaccharomyces pombe), have enabled them to use genetics to identify the proteins involved in establishing epigenetic states of DNA in chromosomes and maintaining them after DNA replication. As these proteins and processes are conserved across fission yeast and man, our studies have translational relevance to medicine. He has published a number of papers in peer-reviewed journals, such as Nature, Cell, PNAS, Molecular Cell, etc. He was also named a Pew Scholar in Biomedical Sciences in 2013, given by the Pew Charitable Trusts to the promising young investigators with potential to significantly impact biomedical research. Professor Li has a strong research connection with NYU Shanghai, and established collaboration with Professor Jungseog Kang at NYU Shanghai. He also served on the NYU-Shanghai Faculty Search Committee in 2014 and 2015.