Mengheng Lee

Field: Pre-Modern Korean History, Early  Modern Sino-Korean Relation
Advisor: Jungwon Kim & Robert Hymes
Email: ml4052@columbia.edu

Mengheng is a Ph.D. student in pre-modern Korean history. His research interests include social, legal, and political history of Chosŏn Korea (1392-1910) and contemporary Korean historiography. He also specializes in early modern Sino-Korean relations (Ming-Qing-Chosŏn relations). In his M.A. thesis, Mengheng discussed border-crossing issues between Chosŏn and Manchu in the early 17th century, dealing with the repatriation of ukanju and Manchu-Chosŏn relations. Now he is working on examining the formation of the borderland between Qing and Chosŏn, and the social status system of Chosŏn. Before joining Columbia, he received both his B.A. (2011) and M.A. (2015) in Department of History at National Taiwan University and spent one year at Korea University, Korea (2013-2014) for his personal research.

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.

Tenzin Yewong Dongchung

Field: Tibetan and Chinese History
Advisor: Gray Tuttle
Email: tyd2102@columbia.edu

In her dissertation, Yewong Dongchung studies the cultural and material history of woodblock printing technology in Tibet and Inner Asia from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Her chapters are based on major printing sites in Beijing, Kham, Central Tibet, and Amdo/Mongolia. In her study of artisans and artisanal knowledge, her methodology is informed by material culture studies (studied under Professor Dorothy Ko) and history of science and technology (studied under Professor Pamela Smith). She works closely with museum collections on Tibetan materials and has completed an orals field in Philosophy of History with Professor Manan Ahmed to understand the connected histories of colonialism and secularism in dealing with the collected objects. 

Yewong completed her Master’s thesis on a twentieth-century Tibetan monastery architect and a master carver called Cho Phuntsok. She earned her undergraduate degree at Wellesley College. 

Recent publications and events:

Review of “Common Ground: Tibetan Buddhist Expansion and Qing China’s Inner Asia.” By Lan Wu, New York: Columbia University Press: 2022. In Yeshe: A Journal of Tibetan Literature, Arts and Humanities.

Co-organized and moderated “Presenting Tibet: A Curators’ Roundtable Discussion” with four curators from Rubin Museum of Art, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2021.

“An Eighteenth-Century Textual Labyrinth: How a Printing Network of Tibetan Buddhism Developed in Qing Inner Asia Under the Kangxi Emperor’s reign,” Waxing Moon Journal, an annual, peer reviewed journal hosted by the Centre for Digital Research and Scholarship at Columbia University, 2021.

“Understanding Carton in early modern Europe, fol. 41r,” The Making and Knowing Project, A Digital Critical Edition of BnF Ms Fr. 640, 2020. For more information see https://www.makingandknowing.org/

Review of “Tibetan Resettlement Stories: Voices of Boston.” High Peaks Pure Earth, 2019.