admin

Isaac C.K. (Chun-Kiang) Tan

Isaac C.K. (Chun-Kiang) Tan

Field: Modern Japanese History
Advisor: Paul Kreitman and Gregory M. Pflugfelder
Email: i.tan@columbia.edu

 Isaac C.K. (Chun Kiang) Tan is a Ph.D. candidate in modern Japanese history. He has completed a double degree program, receiving a B.A. (History) from the National University of Singapore and a B.A. (International Liberal Studies) from Waseda University, Japan. Before coming to Columbia, he was teaching history and mathematics at a public high school in Singapore. His dissertation project looks at the history of bloodtype research in Japan—charting its historical development since the 1910s and highlighting its wider political, social, and cultural implications in contemporary Japan. His wider research interests include environmental and natural history, memory studies, and the history of modern East Asia. He has written journal articles on topics ranging from geopolitics in medieval East Asia to the natural history of British colonial India; and has recently received the 2021 AIHP Glenn Sonnedecker Prize for a manuscript on the dispensing separation issue in Japan.
More information on his academic profile can be found at https://tckisaac.wordpress.com.

by

Tracy (Howard) Stilerman

Tracy (Howard) Stilerman

Field: Tibetan Buddhism
Advisor: Gray Tuttle
Email: t.stilerman@columbia.edu

Tracy (Howard) Stilerman is a PhD candidate in Tibetan Buddhism whose research focuses on the history of Buddhist sites and Tibetan engagement with the landscape in the 17th to 20th centuries. Before beginning the PhD program she received a BA in Tibetan Studies from Columbia University, worked as a translator and interpreter of Tibetan language in the US and Tibet, and spent one year at Waseda University in Tokyo as an exchange researcher.

by

Nataly Shahaf

Nataly Shahaf

Field: Chinese History
Advisor: Eugenia Lean
Email:ns3050@columbia.edu

I am studying modern Chinese intellectual and cultural history with particular focus on the encounters between China and Japan during the late Qing and early Republican periods. I received both my B.A. and M.A. from Tel Aviv University. My Master’s thesis examines the nexus of Buddhism and Neuroscience by tracing the transition and transformation of knowledge along with the practical application of knowledge in relation to the changing social context of the time. I am currently working on the history of art production and distribution, and the visual presentation of religion and women, especially prostitutes. I am interested in the open-ended processes of collecting, printing, publishing, presenting and distributing of art in China vis-à-vis the developments of global networks of technology during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

by