Eric Schluessel is a social historian of China and Central Asia, and his work focuses on Xinjiang (East Turkestan) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Land of Strangers, his first monograph, uses local archival and manuscript sources in Chinese and Chaghatay Turkic to explore the ramifications of a project undertaken in the last decades of the Qing empire to transform Xinjiang’s Turkic-speaking Muslims into Chinese-speaking Confucians. It won the 2021 John K. Fairbank Prize from the American Historical Association.

Schluessel is currently pursuing two research projects: Saints and Sojourners explores the economic history of the Uyghur region from the 1750s through the 1950s as seen from below, through the records of merchants, farmers, and managers of pious endowments. It ties changes at the village level to shifts in the global economy in places as far away as Manchester and Tianjin. Exiled Gods delves into Han Chinese settler culture and religion to illuminate the history of a diasporic community of demobilized soldiers and their descendants that spanned the Qing empire.

Thanks to grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies, Schluessel has also completed a translation and critical edition of the Tārīkh-i Ḥamīdī of Mullah Mūsa Sayrāmī, which is an important Chaghatay-language chronicle of nineteenth-century Xinjiang.

Schluessel previously taught at the University of Montana in Missoula and spent the 2018–2019 academic year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. Schluessel has also completed a translation and critical edition of the Tārīkh-i Ḥamīdī of Mullah Mūsa Sayrāmī, which is an important Chaghatay-language chronicle of nineteenth-century Xinjiang.

Dr. Lisa Lackney is the Program Associate for the East Asia National Resource Center. She graduated from Vanderbilt University in 2020 specializing in Japanese cultural history; her primary research is on the emotional experience of modernity in Japan during the 1920s-1930s.She has written and presented on a variety of topics including transhumanism in anime, Boy’s Love manga, and samurai films.

Robert Kincaid is the Program Coordinator for the East Asia National Resource Center.  He graduated from American University in 2021 majoring in International Relations with a regional focus of East Asia and the Pacific and specializes in cross-strait relations and the U.S-China relationship. His research interests also include U.S- Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) relations. He has previoiusly worked in international exchange programming and has experience assisting with the coordination and execution of the State Department’s Young Southeast Asian Leaders Association (YSEALI).

Gregg A. Brazinsky works on U.S.-East Asian relations and East Asian international history. He is interested in the flow of commerce, ideas, and culture among Asian countries and across the Pacific. He is proficient in Mandarin Chinese and Korean. He is the author of two books: Winning the Third World (2017), which focuses on Sino-American Rivalry in the Third World and Nation Building in South Korea (2007), which explores U.S.-South Korean relations during the Cold War. Currently, he is working on two other book projects. The first examines American nation-building in Asia during the Cold War. The second explores Sino-North Korean relations between 1949 and 1992 and focuses specifically on the development of cultural and economic ties between the two countries. He has received numerous fellowships to support his research including the Kluge Fellowship from the Library of Congress, the Smith Richardson Foundation junior faculty fellowship, and a fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Center. Professor Brazinsky also currently serves as the director of the George Washington Cold War Group.

As director of the Asian Studies Program, Professor Brazinsky has attracted some of the brightest students from around the country and the world who share a commitment to pursuing careers related to Asia. He helped to launch a special mentoring program for Asian Studies MA students and has worked to expand fellowship and professional opportunities for students in the program.

Professor Dickson received his B.A. in political science and English literature, his M.A. in Chinese Studies, and his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan. He joined the faculty of The George Washington University and the Elliott School in 1993. 

Professor Dickson’s research and teaching focus on political dynamics in China, especially the adaptability of the Chinese Communist Party and the regime it governs. In addition to courses on China, he also teaches on comparative politics and authoritarianism.

His current research examines the political consequences of economic reform in China, the Chinese Communist Party’s evolving strategy for survival, and the changing relationship between state and society. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the US Institute of Peace, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Professor Dickson received his B.A. in political science and English literature, his M.A. in Chinese Studies, and his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan. He joined the faculty of The George Washington University and the Elliott School in 1993. 

Professor Dickson’s research and teaching focus on political dynamics in China, especially the adaptability of the Chinese Communist Party and the regime it governs. In addition to courses on China, he also teaches on comparative politics and authoritarianism.

His current research examines the political consequences of economic reform in China, the Chinese Communist Party’s evolving strategy for survival, and the changing relationship between state and society. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the US Institute of Peace, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Alexa teaches in the English department, is an affiliated faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and co-founded the GW Digital Humanities Institute. She directed the Dean’s Scholars in Shakespeare (a signature program of GW’s Columbian College of Arts and Sciences). At MIT, she is co-founder and co-director of the open access Global Shakespeares digital performance archive. Her publications can be accessed on ResearchGate. 

Her teaching and publications are unified by a commitment to understanding the mobility of early modern and postmodern cultures in their literary, performative, and digital forms of expression. Her research has been funded by the Fulbright, National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, International Shakespeare Association, Folger Institute, and other agencies. 

Her latest books include Race (co-authored; Routledge New Critical Idiom series), Local and Global Myths in Shakespearean Performance (co-edited; Palgrave), and Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation (co-edited; Palgrave). She is co-general editor of The Shakespearean International Yearbook, and has guest-edited special issues of the journals Shakespeare: Journal of the British Shakespeare Association, Asian Theatre Journal, and Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation. She received the MLA’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize, an honorable mention of NYU’s Joe A. Callaway Prize for the Best Book on Drama or Theatre, and the International Convention of Asian Scholars (ICAS) Colleagues’ Choice Award.

She chaired the MLA committee on the New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare and edits the Palgrave-Macmillan book series on “Global Shakespeares”. She has taught at Lincoln College, Oxford, as an early modern studies faculty of the Middlebury College Bread Loaf School of English (a summer graduate program) and in South Korea as distinguished visiting professor at Seoul National University. 

In her outreach work, Alexa has testified before congress in a congressional briefing on the humanities and globalization, and been interviewed by BBC 4 (TV), BBC Radio (in D.C., London and Edinburgh), The Economist, Voice of America, Foreign Policy, Index on Censorship, Hay Festival, Edinburgh Festival, and various outlets and podcasts by Oxford University Press, Folger Shakespeare Library, and other journals, news media, and publishers in the U.S., China, Japan, Korea, and Brazil. 

At Middlebury College Alexa holds the John M. Kirk, Jr. Chair in Medieval and Renaissance Literature at the Bread Loaf School of English. 

Xiaofei Kang holds a Ph.D. in Chinese history from Columbia University (2000). She teaches courses on religions in East Asia, and her research focuses on gender, ethnicity, and Chinese religions in traditional and modern China. She is the author of The Cult of the Fox: Power, Gender, and Popular Religion in Late Imperial and Modern China (Columbia University Press, 2006). She co-authored (with Donald S. Sutton) Contesting the Yellow Dragon: Ethnicity, Religion and the State in the Sino-Tibetan Borderland (Brill, 2016), and co-edited (with Jia Jinhua and Ping Yao) Gendering Chinese Religion: Subject, Identity and Body (SUNY Press, 2014). Her recent book, Enchanted Revolution: Ghosts, Shamans, and Gender Politics in Chinese Communist Propaganda (Oxford, 2023) examines the intertwined discourses of religion, gender and the Chinese Communist revolution.

David Shambaugh is an internationally recognized authority and award-winning author on contemporary China and the international relations of Asia. He is the Gaston Sigur Professor of Asian Studies, Political Science & International Affairs, and the founding Director of the China Policy Program in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. 

Professor Shambaugh previously served in the Department of State and on the National Security Council staff during the Carter administration (1977- 1979), was also a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at The Brookings Institution from 1996-2016. Prior to joining the Elliott School and GWU faculty he was a Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, and Reader in Chinese Politics at the University of London’s School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS) from 1987-1996, where he also served as Editor of the prestigious journal The China Quarterly. He has served on the Board of Directors of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, Advisory Board of the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR), East-West Center Fellowship Board, is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and member of its Board of Studies, has been a participant in the Aspen Strategy Group, the Asia Society Task Force on U.S. China Policy, and other public policy and scholarly organizations. An active public intellectual and frequent commentator in the international media, he also serves on numerous editorial boards, and has been a consultant to governments, research institutions, foundations, universities, corporations, banks, and investment funds.

Professor Shambaugh has been selected for numerous awards and grants, including as a Distinguished Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and a Senior Fulbright Scholar (in residence at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences). He has received research grants from the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, German Marshall Fund, Hinrich Foundation, the British Academy, and U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He has also been a visiting scholar or professor at universities in Australia, China, Denmark, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, and he has lectured all over the world.

As an author, Professor Shambaugh has published 35 books, including China’s Leaders: From Mao to Now (second edition, 2023); International Relations of Asia (third edition, 2022); Where Great Powers Meet: America & China in Southeast Asia (2021); and China & the World (2020). Other books include The China Reader: Rising Power (2016); Tangled Titans: The United States and China (2012); China’s Communist Party: Atrophy & Adaptation (2008); Power Shift: China & Asia’s New Dynamics (2005); and Modernizing China’s Military (2002); Making China Policy (2001); The Modern Chinese State (2000); Chinese Foreign Policy: Theory & Practice (1994); American Studies of Contemporary China (1993); and Beautiful Imperialist (1991). He has also authored numerous reports, scholarly articles and chapters, newspaper op-eds, and book reviews. He is fluent in Chinese.

Janet Steele is professor of Media and Public Affairs and International Affairs. She received her Ph.D. in History from the Johns Hopkins University, and focuses on how culture is communicated through the mass media.

Dr. Steele is a frequent visitor to Southeast Asia where she lectures on topics ranging from the role of the press in a democratic society to specialized courses on narrative journalism. Her book, “Wars Within: The Story of Tempo, an Independent Magazine in Soeharto’s Indonesia,” focuses on Tempo magazine and its relationship to the politics and culture of New Order Indonesia. “Mediating Islam, Cosmopolitan Journalisms in Muslim Southeast Asia,” explores the relationship between journalism and Islam in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Awarded two Fulbright teaching and research grants to Indonesia and a third to Serbia, she has served as a State Department speaker-specialist in Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Brunei, the Philippines, East Timor, Taiwan, Burma, Sudan, Egypt, India, Bangladesh, Jamaica, and Kosovo. The author of numerous articles on journalism theory and practice, her 2014 book, “Email Dari Amerika,” (Email from America), is a collection of newspaper columns written in Indonesian and originally published in the newspaper Surya. Her most recent book, forthcoming in October 2023, is called “Malaysiakini and the power of independent media in Malaysia.”