current-phd-students

Chris Kim

Chris Kim

Field: Chinese History
Advisor: Li Feng
Email: cfk2123@columbia.edu

Chris is a Ph.D. student in early Chinese history. His research investigates the long-term developments in the sociopolitical institutions and economic systems of the Zhou period, with a focus on the Spring and Autumn period. His approach is multi-disciplinary, drawing on textual and paleographic studies, archaeology, spatial analysis, and anthropological theory. Chris holds an A.M. from Harvard University and a B.A. from Brown University.

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Mairead Hynes

Mairead Hynes

Field: Modern Japanese History
Advisor: Gregory Pflugfelder
Email: mch2203@columbia.edu

Mairead Hynes (she/her) is a PhD student in the History Department, studying the comparative transpacific history of women’s war mobilization and anti-military feminism in 20th century Japan and the United States. She focuses on how women in both countries have understood and articulated women’s war responsibility and complicity with empire, and investigates alternative feminist historical methodologies as they appear in movement practices of women’s history. Before entering the Ph.D. program at Columbia University, Mairead graduated from the University of Connecticut in 2013 with a BA in History, and in 2018 earned her MA in Contemporary Asian Studies at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan.

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Tianyuan Huang

Tianyuan Huang

Field: Japanese History
Advisor: Gregory Pflugfelder
Email: th2750@columbia.edu

Tianyuan Huang is a PhD student in early modern and modern Japanese history. Through the evolving conceptions, discourses, and practices surrounding female-specific health issues, her research explores the intersection of the history of medicine, gender and sexuality studies, and the sociology of knowledge. In her dissertation, Tianyuan investigates both the deliberate and the unintentional enacting of ignorance in relation to women’s health, analyzing how different forms of “not knowing” shaped social relationships, legal proceedings, along with individuals’ life and death. In addition, Tianyuan is interested in the historical movement of medical texts, techniques, and therapeutic substances in East Asia, as well as digital humanities and the application of historical geographic information systems (HGIS).
Tianyuan received her Bachelor of Laws (2014) and Master of Laws (2017) in International Politics from Peking University and a Master of Public Policy (2017) from the University of Tokyo. Before entering the PhD program at Columbia University, she worked for an LGBTI rights NGO as a part-time researcher with a focus on international human rights mechanisms and human rights diplomacy.

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