Ajay Verghese joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) during the 2012–13 academic year from The George Washington University, where he received his PhD in political science in August 2012.

His research interests are broadly centered on ethnicity, conflict, and South Asia. His doctoral dissertation, Colonialism and Patterns of Ethnic Conflict in Contemporary India, examines why ethnic conflicts in multi-ethnic states revolve around one identity rather than another. He argues that British colonial rule is the key determinant of contemporary patterns of ethnic violence in India. During his time at Shorenstein APARC, he converted his dissertation into a book manuscript.

Verghese has been published in Qualitative & Multi-Method Research, and has received funding for language training and fieldwork in India from a variety of sources, including the U.S. State Department, the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, and the Konosuke Matsushita Memorial Foundation.

Verghese also holds a BA in political science and French from Temple University.

Jaeeun Kim was a Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow at the Walter H. Asia-Pacific Research Center for the 2012–13 academic year. Before coming to Stanford, she was a postdoctoral research associate at the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University for the 2011–12 academic year. She specializes in political sociology, ethnicity and nationalism, and international migration in East Asia and beyond, and is trained in comparative-historical and ethnographic methods.

During her time at Stanford, Kim set out to complete the manuscript of her first book based on her dissertation, entitled Colonial Migration and Transborder Membership Politics in Twentieth-Century Korea. Drawing on archival and ethnographic data collected through 14 months of multi-sited field research in South Korea, Japan, and China, the dissertation analyzes diaspora politics in twentieth-century Korea, focusing on colonial-era ethnic Korean migrants to Japan and northeast China.

In addition, she is planning to further develop her second project on the migration careers, legalization strategies, and conversion patterns of ethnic Korean migrants from northeast China to the United States. The project examines the transpacific flows of people and religious faiths between East Asia and North America through the lens of the intersecting literatures on religion, migration, ethnicity, law, and transnationalism. She has completed ethnographic field research in Los Angeles, New York, and northeast China for this project.

Kim’s publications include articles in Theory and Society, Law and Social Inquiry, and European Journal of Sociology. She has been awarded various fellowships that support interdisciplinary and transnational research projects, including those from the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies.

Kim was born and grew up in Seoul, South Korea. She holds a BA in law (2001) and an MA in sociology (2003) from Seoul National University, and an MA (2006) and PhD (2011) in sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles. After completing her fellowship term at Stanford, she will be an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at George Mason University, beginning in fall 2013. 

Christian Collet (PhD, University of California, Irvine) joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) during the 2012–13 academic year from International Christian University, Tokyo, where he serves as senior associate professor of American politics and international relations. 

His research interests focus on public opinion in Asian Pacific/American contexts and the influence of race, ethnicity and nationalism on political mobilization. 

During his time at Shorenstein APARC, he is working on a project that uses comparative survey data to examine the dynamics of Japanese opinion toward domestic politics, China and Southeast Asia. He is also finishing up a project concerning the role of Vietnam in the political incorporation of first generation Vietnamese Americans. In 2004–05, he held a visiting appointment at Viet Nam National University, Ho Chi Minh City, under the U.S. Fulbright Program. 

Collet's work has appeared in Perspectives on Politics, The Journal of Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, Japanese Journal of Political Science, PS, Amerasia Journal and Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts. He is the co-editor, with Pei-te Lien, of The Transnational Politics of Asian Americans (Temple University Press, 2009). 

Recent Publications 

2012   “Is Globalization Undermining Civilizational Identities? A Test of Huntington’s Core State Assumptions among the Publics of Greater Asia and the Pacific,” Japanese Journal of Political Science 13(4), 553–587. With Takashi Inoguchi. 

2010   “Enclave, Place or Nation? Defining Little Saigon in the Midst of Incorporation, Transnationalism and Long Distance Activism,” Amerasia Journal 36(3), 1–27. With Hiroko Furuya.

2009   The Transnational Politics of Asian Americans, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. With Pei-te Lien.

2009   “Contested Nation: Vietnam and the Emergence of Saigon Nationalism,” in Collet and Lien, The Transnational Politics of Asian Americans (Philadelphia: Temple University Press), 56–73. With Hiroko Furuya. 

2008   “Minority Candidates, Alternative Media and Multiethnic America: Deracialization or Toggling?,” Perspectives on Politics 6 (December), 707–28.

Karen Del Biondo is a 2012-2013 postdoctoral scholar at CDDRL. Her research is funded with a Fulbright-Schuman award and a postdoctoral grant from the Belgian-American Educational Foundation (BAEF). She holds an MA in Political Science (International Relations) from Ghent University and an MA in European Studies from the Université Libre de Bruxelles. In 2007-2008 she obtained a Bernheim fellowship for an internship in European affairs at the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Permanent Representation to the EU. 

Karen Del Biondo obtained her PhD at the Centre for EU Studies, Ghent University in September 2012 with a dissertation entitled ‘Norms, self-interest and effectiveness: Explaining double standards in EU reactions to violations of democratic principles in sub-Saharan Africa’. Her PhD research was funded by the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research (FWO). Apart from her PhD research, she has been involved in the research project ‘The Substance of EU Democracy Promotion’ (Ghent University/University of Mannheim/Centre of European Policy Studies) and has published on the securitisation of EU development policies. In January 2011 she conducted field research in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Her postdoctoral research will focus on the comparison between EU and US democracy assistance in sub-Saharan Africa.

Karen Del Biondo’s recent publications include: ‘Security and Development in EU External Relations: Converging, but in which direction?’ (with Stefan Oltsch and Jan Orbie), in S. Biscop & R. Whitman (eds.) Handbook of European Union Security, Routledge (2012); ‘Democracy Promotion Meets Development Cooperation: The EU as a Promoter of Democratic Governance in Sub-Saharan Africa’, European Foreign Affairs Review, Vol. 16, N°5, 2011, 659-672; and ‘EU Aid Conditionality in ACP Countries. Explaining Inconsistency in EU Sanctions Practice’, Journal of Contemporary European Research, Vol. 7, N°3, 2011, 380-395.