Project: The Future of Sino-Western Relations is in their Past. Faculty investigators Daryl Ireland (STH and CGCM) and Eugenio Menegon (History/CAS). The grant will support the expansion of the China Historical Christian Database (CHCD), a platform which provides users tools to discover where every Christian church, school, hospital, lab, museum, orphanage, publishing house, and other important locations were situated in China.
Dan Liu is a graduate student at BU School of Theology. He is a native of Northern China. He is interested in Chinese Christianity and Chinese Church History, with a special interest in China’s modern encounter with Christianity. By participating in the project of CISS, Dan will use his background and skills to work in Boston-area archives to locate and record more data on Christian missions. In his free time, Dan loves to watch movies and Taiwan TV shows.
Aixin Yi is a PhD student at the Department of History working under Dr. Eugenio Menegon, focusing on Protestant missionary movements in late imperial and modern China. Her research interests also concern the development of Christianity in East Asia and the global history of science and technology. Yi holds a BA in sociology from Beijing Tsinghua University and an MA in East Asian Studies from Duke University. For her master’s project, which focused on the religious experience of rural-to-urban migrant workers in contemporary China, Yi conducted fieldwork in churches and Christian migrant communities in southeast China. Prior to joining Boston University, Yi worked as a food journalist in Shanghai. This work has allowed her to develop a strong interest in food and ethics.
Project: Moving from Precarity Towards Prosperity: An Abductive Analysis of Precarity Management in Service Sector Employment Faculty investigator Makarand Mody (SHA). The grant will support the investigation of strategies that workers in precarious service occupations in the hospitality and long-term care sectors develop and implement to combat the adverse outcomes of precarious employment (PE) for worker well-being and quality of life.
Kasandra Kue-Rojas (CAS ’23) is a junior majoring in Anthropology with a Specialization in Health & Medicine. She is interested in advocating for more person-centered approaches for cancer patients who deserve to be respected/heard, and addressing structural disparities that may contribute to a vicious cycle of clashing perspectives for doctors. Ultimately, she would like to serve as a middle ground for negotiating for better conditions for individuals who may be sidelined, undervalued, and facing difficult situations that stem from precarious employment. She is thrilled to be a part of the CISS as a summer research assistant, which allows her to prepare herself for UROP which will also involve interviewing cancer patients that face difficulties associated with health status discrimination & undergo a long journey toward recovery. In her free time, she likes to play the piano & go to the gym.
Emily Schwartz (CAS ’24) is a sophomore majoring in sociocultural anthropology and Spanish with a minor in Latin American studies. Emily is originally from Indianapolis, IN, but she loves all that Boston has to offer academically and socially. She is particularly excited to apply ethnographic fieldwork interview skills to the study and to gain experience conducting interviews in the field. Outside of the project, Emily works as a tutor teaching English to immigrants. In the future, she hopes to study abroad and conduct fieldwork research in Brazil. Emily is excited to be a part of such a meaningful and beneficial project through CISS.