Young-Hae Han is a visiting professor at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) for the 2012–13 academic year. She is also a professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at Seoul National University (SNU). Her research and education focuses on contemporary Japanese society. She has conducted field research on Japanese local-level grassroots social movements in cities such as Kawasaki, Kunidachi, Kobe, Yamagata, Kanazawa, and Oita. After the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, she organized a team and conducted research in the damaged area. Han is also involved on researching another topic that is of great interest to her: ethnic minorities in contemporary Japan. For this topic, her research has been focused on identity issues of Zainichi Koreans, particularly on the new relation of Zainichi with their “homeland” in the post-cold war period.

Han served as the director of the Institute for Japanese Studies at SNU from 2006 to 2012 until just before she joined Shorenstein APARC. She also served as the chair of the Exchange Committee of KSA-AJS at the Korean Sociological Association from 2008 to 2011.

Han is the author of numerous publications, such as the books: Understanding Contemporary Japanese Society (in Korean); Japanese Community and Grassroots Social Movements (in Korean); Multi-Cultural Japan and Identity Politics (co-author, in Korean). Her recent publications include Institutionalization of East Asian Studies and New Dilemmas: With a Focus on Japanese Studies (in English); New Relationship between Zainichi Koreans and the Homeland: Through the Journeys of the Former ‘Chosen Nationals’ Living in Korea (in Japanese); The Meaning of ‘Seikatsu’ (Life) in the Citizens’ Movement in Contemporary Japan (in Korean); and The Inheritance of the Korean Dance and Identity in the Ethnic Korean Community (in Korean).  

Daniel M. Smith was a postdoctoral fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) during the 2012–13 academic year.

He is an expert on Japanese politics whose research interests include political parties, elections and electoral systems, candidate recruitment and selection, and coalition government. During his time at Shorenstein APARC, he will be completing a book manuscript about the causes and consequences of political dynasties in developed democracies, with a particular focus on Japan.

Smith earned his PhD and MA in political science from the University of California, San Diego, and his BA in political science and Italian from the University of California, Los Angeles. He has conducted research in Japan as a Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology research scholar at Chuo University (2006–2007), and as a Fulbright IIE dissertation research fellow at the Institute of Social Science at the University of Tokyo (2010–2011). After completing his fellowship at Shorenstein APARC, he will join the Department of Government at Harvard University as an assistant professor.

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.

Huiyu Li is the 2012–13 Takahashi Pre-doctoral Fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC). She is a PhD candidate in the Department of Economics at Stanford University, expecting to graduate in 2014. Prior coming to Stanford, she attended high school in Australia and graduated with the State Ministerial Award for her performance in the state-wide high school certificate examination. She then received a BA and an MA in economics from the University of Tokyo, where she was awarded the university's Presidential Award for her academic achievements in undergraduate studies. Li also held the Japanese Government Scholarship and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Research Fellowship for Young Scientists. She is fluent in Chinese, English, and Japanese. 

Her research interests are: 1) the impact of firm bankruptcy procedures on macroeconomic performances and the design of efficient procedures; 2) the impact of financial frictions on innovation and long-run economic growth; and 3) the interaction between economic development and the entry costs of firms. At Shorenstein APARC, she will be working on a comparative study of bankruptcy procedures and macroeconomic performance in China, Japan, and the United States.

Li has presented at many major economic conferences, such as the 10th World Congress of the Econometric Society. She has also co-authored work with researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Her research on computational economics has been published in Mathematics of Operations Research.