IAFOR is delighted to announce the IAFOR Global Fellows for 2024/2025 as a part of its Global Fellowship Programme initiative. This fellowship programme is a wonderful opportunity for researchers to engage with IAFOR and its international network and collaborate together as fellows themselves to strengthen their research capacity and broaden their connections. In the inaugural 2024/2025 Programme, we proposed a theme of ‘independent voices’ with a focus on East Asian topics, selecting a cohort of up-and-coming researchers in the field to contribute to building a broader knowledge within the region where IAFOR operates. The selected fellows have shown their outstanding capacity and commitment to represent independent voices from various perspectives, be it the arts, culture, or politics. Members of the IAFOR community can look forward to engaging with the fellows through upcoming conferences and their publications. Future programmes featuring the fellows and their research are to be announced in our monthly newsletter.
We have received a large number of applications and are proud to introduce the five successful fellows for the 2024/2025 cohort as follows:
Hongmin Ahn
South Korea
Mr Hongmin Ahn is an incoming student at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Studies in Yokohama, Japan (2024-25). He holds a Master of Theological Studies in Buddhism from Harvard Divinity School and a Bachelor of Arts in Religion from Bard College, United States. As an interdisciplinary scholar, Mr Ahn's research focuses on modern transnational Buddhism in Korea and Japan, exploring their history, culture, practices, gender dynamics, and institutions such as clerical marriage and the popularization of Buddhism through military chaplaincy.
Azusa Iwane
Japan
Ms Azusa Iwane is the vice-project manager and editor at Global News View (GNV), an independent media outlet introducing the Japanese audience to international news overlooked by domestic mainstream media. She is one of the main podcast hosts of GNV. She is also a researcher specializing in international media coverage and the role of independent media, focusing on raising awareness on poverty issues. Ms Iwane has extensive experience working with international development NGOs. Her master’s thesis dealt with how African poverty issues are represented in the Japanese media. She conducted a series of field studies in Zambia to better grasp the effective poverty experienced by mining communities present in Zambia with the collaboration of the Dag Hammarskjöld Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, Copperbelt University, Zambia.
Sheng-Hsiang Lance Peng
Taiwan
Dr Sheng-Hsiang Lance Peng is an early career research fellow at IAFOR, having recently completed his PhD from the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. His PhD work combines the spectral lens of hauntology with phenomenology to explore the gender(ed) lives of justice-involved girls in out-of-home care. Dr Peng leverages his experience in applying uncanny perspectives such as mnemohistory, monster culture, and hauntology to work with marginalised narratives, and he currently uses monstrous othering to reinterpret voices on the fringes of Japanese society context as part of his monster(s) project.
Shuqi Wang
China
Dr Shuqi Wang recently completed her doctoral degree in Public Policy and Global Affairs from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her research focuses on international relations, foreign policy analysis, and alliance politics, with a regional specialization in the Asia-Pacific. Born and raised in China, she completed her undergraduate studies in International Politics and a Master of Diplomacy at Peking University, China. Currently, she conducts research on the historical influences on foreign policy preferences within US alliance systems, focusing on the cases of Japan and South Korea.
Yanhua Zhou
China
Dr Yanhua Zhou is currently a Professor of Art History at the Research Center for Visual Art, Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, China. She is also affiliated as a Professor of Contemporary Chinese Art and Gender and Associate Director of Wanwu Art Research Lab at the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Arizona, United States. Born in Chongqing, China, Dr Zhou obtained her PhD in East Asian Studies with a focus on Chinese Anthropology from the University of Arizona, United States and a Master of Art History from the University of St Andrews, United Kingdom. Taking an interdisciplinary approach combining art history, anthropology, area studies, and cultural studies, her research focuses on the issue of art and geographic politics of contemporary art in Asia, global socially engaged art in a transnational context, affective infrastructural studies, and non-human agency in art.
