CEAS Congratulates 2025-2026 PGFA Awardees

The Center for East Asian Studies congratulates its faculty and affiliated faculty for being awarded the Provost's Global Faculty Awards. The PGFA provide annual cost-reimbursable awards of up to USD $30,000 to support international faculty activities with a collaborative element in key regions where the University of Chicago has strong engagement, including mainland China, and Hong and East Asia, among other regions.

The following is a listing that includes CEAS faculty and affiliated faculty awardees:

MAINLAND CHINA

Jonathan Lio, Department of Medicine
Residency Clinical Observation Program
This project expands an established clinical exchange program between UChicago Medicine and Peking Union Medical College Hospital (PUMCH) to include Wuhan University, leveraging long-standing institutional partnerships. Since 2014, the exchange has facilitated mutual clinical observation for over 60 residents in surgery, internal medicine, and pediatrics, with renewed activity in 2024 following the COVID-19 pandemic. The expanded program will support up to six UChicago residents for short-term placements in China and welcome reciprocal participants, with staggered schedules to optimize hosting. Through direct observation, ward rounds, and academic engagement in varied clinical contexts, participants will deepen diagnostic skills, expand cultural competence, and gain firsthand exposure to global healthcare practices.

Yueran Zhang, Department of Sociology
Between the Historical and Ethnographic: A Symposium on Interdisciplinary Social Science Methodologies
This project convenes a two-day symposium at the University of Chicago Center in Beijing (July 5–6, 2025) to explore the intersections between historical and ethnographic methodologies across the social sciences. Bringing together a diverse group of scholars from sociology, history, anthropology, and political science—based in the U.S., mainland China, Hong Kong, and Singapore—the event aims to cultivate interdisciplinary dialogue on methodological innovation. With a focus on research related to historical and contemporary China, participants will reflect on how these two approaches can mutually inform one another, particularly in understanding the social transformations of the reform era. Hosted in partnership with the Tsinghua Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences (TIAS), the symposium will feature keynote lectures, panels, and roundtables, while laying the groundwork for ongoing scholarly exchange between UChicago and Chinese academic institutions.

Zhaotian Luo, Department of Political Science
UChicago Beijing Conference on the Political Economy of Governance, 2025
This project proposes a three-day academic conference at the University of Chicago Center in Beijing to foster comparative political economy research on governance models in the U.S. and China. The conference will bring together 15 presenters and 10 discussants from both countries, aiming to analyze institutional arrangements across government, market, and society. With two daily sessions and a culminating roundtable, the event will facilitate cross-national academic exchange and identify future research agendas. It will also involve graduate students and media for broader engagement. A post-conference edited volume will capture scholarly insights and set the foundation for sustained bilateral collaboration in this field.

HONG KONG

Angie Heo, Department of Anthropology 
Political Religion and International Relations in Japan, South Korea, and the U.S.
This project examines the question: what is the transnational role of the Unification Church in shaping international relations between Japan, South Korea, and America? The co-PIs will convene a two-day workshop at the University of Chicago Yuen Campus in Hong Kong with a target date in March 2026. The workshop centers on two main research objectives: 1) examining the UC’s political orientation in Japan, South Korea, and the U.S., with special attention on its anti-communist lobbying strategy (1960s-1980s) and religious conservative platform (2000s-onward), and; 2) contextualizing the UC’s religious activities in the broader landscape of conservative politics, competing moral ideologies, and “culture wars” in the Cold War and post-Cold War era. These combined research aims promise much-needed insights on the ways religious organizations, like the UC, have served as unofficial agents for Japan, South Korea, and the U.S. in the Pacific Asian region under the East-West Cold War system. In our global political present, these insights are valuable for better understanding the political consolidation of moral and religious conservativism on a transnational scale. With a comparative view on secularism in Japan, South Korea, and the U.S., the group will examine the historical emergence of political relation in relationship to larger developments between civil society and state activity.

To learn more about the above-mentioned awardees and projects, and to see the full listing of PGFA seed projects, click here.