Faculty

Xiaonan Chu

Xiaonan Chu

Adjunct Lecturer in Chinese

Office: 510 Kent Hall
Office Hours: M, W, Th 10:20–11:20 a.m.
Email: xc2375@columbia.edu

Educational Background

MA: Bilingual and Bicultural Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
Certificate: Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages (TCSOL), Teachers College, Columbia University
MA: English Literature, China University of Petroleum
BA: English, Changchun University of Science and Technology

Classes Taught

CHNS UN1111 FIRST YEAR CHINESE W I
CHNS UN1112 FIRST YEAR CHINESE W II

Research Interests

Second Language Acquisition
Chinese Language Pedagogy
Language Input and Learner Engagement
Differentiated Language Instruction
AI-Supported Language Learning
Curriculum Development

Bio

Xiaonan Chu began teaching as an adjunct Chinese language instructor at Columbia University in Fall 2025. She previously served as a Teaching Associate in Chinese at Columbia and has taught Chinese and English in both the United States and China. Her experience also includes curriculum development, teacher education, and interdisciplinary program design. Her current interests center on responsive language-learning ecologies that integrate rich and comprehensible input, meaningful communication, differentiated pathways, learner agency, and AI-supported learning. She is particularly interested in how language curricula can respond to learners’ diverse linguistic backgrounds, cognitive strengths, and developmental needs.

Publications

Chu, Xiaonan. “On a Contrastive Method of Teaching Culture in ELT Classroom for College-Level Students.” Higher Education of Social Science, 3(3), 2012.

Chu, Xiaonan, and Xiuhua Wang. “Characteristic Analysis of Mandarin Chinese From a Cultural Perspective.” Studies in Literature and Language, 7(2), 2013.

Book chapter in preparation (co-author): Interdisciplinary theme-based learning for K–12 educators in China.

Palden Gyal

Palden Gyal

Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Heyman Center for the Humanities; Lecturer, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures

Office: TBD
Office Hours: F 1:00- 3:00pm
Email:  palden.gyal@columbia.edu

Educational Background

PhD: History-East Asia, Columbia University
MA: Buddhist Studies, Harvard University
BA: Philosophy, Duke University

Classes Taught

ASCE UN1359 Intro to East Asian Civilization: China
HSEA GU4762 Rethinking Modern China Through its Borderlands
HSEA GU4880 History of Modern China I

Research Interests

My primary project is a book manuscript developed from my dissertation: Mapping Power at Empire’s Edge: Statecraft and Sovereignty in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands, 1700–1950. The book reconceptualizes the Sino-Tibetan borderlands as active spaces of political negotiation rather than passive peripheries shaped by imperial design. It looks at how eastern Tibetan polities, especially the princely states of Gyalrong, shaped Qing imperial expansion and governance through political, economic, and religious agency from the early eighteenth century onward. Drawing on Tibetan- and Chinese-language archives, it centers local actors to offer a fresh perspective on empire and frontier governance in Inner and East Asian history. 

Alongside this, I am developing two further research projects: one on revolutionary politics and memory in twentieth-century Eastern Tibet, and another on the longue-durée environmental and climate history of premodern Tibet. Both build on preliminary research already conducted.

Selected Grants and Awards

Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund (Sylff), 2025
Weatherhead Dissertation Writing Grant, 2024-2025
Mellon International Travels Fellowship, Columbia University (GSAS), 2022-2023
Climate Humanities Course Development Grant, Columbia Climate School, 2022

Professional Affiliations

Member, Association of Asian Studies (AAS)
Member, American Historical Association (AHA)
Member, American Academy of Religion (AAR)
Board Member, Amdo Research Network (ARN)

Selected Publications

“The Meu Kingdom: Unravelling the history of a Tibetan polity in the Sino-Tibetan borderlands, 1700–1930,” Études mongoles et sibériennes, centrasiatiques et tibétaines 55 (2024) 

“The Sociopolitical Impact of a Natural Disaster: The Snow Disaster of the Earth-Rat Year (1828) in Northwestern Tibet,” Climates and Cultures in History (2024) 

“The Lament of an Old Man.” In Longing to Awaken: Buddhist Devotion in Tibetan Poetry and Song, edited by Holly Gayley and Dominique Townsend (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2024)

“The Role of Pain in Buddhism: The Conquest of Suffering,” co-authored with Owen Flanagan, in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Pain, edited by Jennifer Corns (London: Routledge, 2017). 

Ruth Barraclough

Ruth Barraclough

Korea Foundation Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, Department of History; Director, Center for Korean Research

Office: 913 IAB
Email: rb3029@columbia.edu

Educational Background

BA (Honours) University of Queensland
PhD Australian National University

Classes Taught

HIST UN2851 Making Modern Korea
HIST GU4872 North Korean History, Culture and Politics

Research Interests

Ruth Barraclough is an historian of modern Korea with a focus on labor, gender, and literature.

Her first book, Factory Girl Literature: Sexuality, Violence and Representation in Industrializing Korea, was about the working-class women and girls who generated Korea’s industrialization while cherishing ambitions to be writers, novelists, and poets. In Korea the book spent twenty weeks on the history best-seller list, was nominated for the President’s summer reading list by Korea’s leading book and newspaper editors, and was named one of the top ten books of 2017.

In addition to academic work, Dr. Barraclough has served as Vice-President of the Asian Studies Association of Australia (2023) and as a board member of the Australia Korea Foundation (2018-23) to advise the Australian government on new areas of cooperation between the two countries. In her work for the board, she was instrumental in establishing a Visiting Chair of Australian Studies at Seoul National University. At Columbia, Dr. Barraclough is the new Faculty Director of the Dual Degree Masters in International and World History with LSE and from January 2025 is the Director of the Center for Korean Research at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute.

Before joining Columbia in 2024, Dr. Barraclough served on the faculty at the Australian National University.