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CAS Former Director Tim Oakes discusses Chinese urbanization at the 2018 Nazarbayev University China Forum, Astana,  Kazakhstan.

Professor Oakes was interviewed by Nazarbayev University President Shigeo Katsu during the 2018 Nazarbayev University Forum "China and the World: Engaging with a Reemerging Superpower”, November 28-29 in Astana, Kazakhstan. The forum brought together experts from the US, Europe, and Asia to discuss and debate the future of China and its implications for Asia and the wider world.

CAS Faculty Interview: Dr. Tim Oakes

Dr. Tim Oakes discusses how his passion for learning about China and its citizens has helped him cultivate long-lasting connections for his research.

Tim Oakes is Professor of Geography and former Director of the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Currently he also holds positions as Visiting Professor at Guizhou Minzu University in Guiyang, China, and Wageningen University, Netherlands. Oakes received his B.A. in Chinese literature from Colby College, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Geography from the University of Washington. Oakes teaches courses on the geography of China, cultural geography, development geography, qualitative field methods, and world regional geography. His research lies at the juncture of human geography, contemporary China studies and critical tourism studies, and has established a path of distinctive understanding about the new cultural landscape in China, with particular concern for different ways that governments harness symbolic culture and social life for economic development. The author of Tourism and Modernity in China (1998), his many publications also include Faiths on Display: Religion, Tourism, and the Chinese State (2010) and Translocal China: Linkages, Identities, and the Reimagining of Space (2006). His journal articles appear in the Journal of Asian Studies, China Quarterly, Modern China, and positions: east asia cultures critique, among others.

CAS Faculty Interview: Dr. Jennifer Fluri

Jennifer Fluri discusses how her interests in social movements and women’s rights influences her research, as well as what opportunities are available for students to perform research.

Jennifer Fluri (Ph.D, Pennsylvania State University) is a feminist political geographer, with a concentration in conflict, security, and aid/development in South and Southwest Asia. Her doctoral research focused on the use of public and private space by the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), a clandestine feminist-nationalist organization. Her post-doctoral research project examined the spatial arrangements, interactions, and gender roles within the international "community" in Kabul, Afghanistan in comparison with the "local" Afghan population. Her current research focuses on the geopolitics and geo-economics of gender, security, and violence in the regions of biometrics, biotechnologies, and gender-based military operations.

CAS Faculty Interview Dr. Mike Dwyer

Mike Dwyer discusses his research in Laos and Cambodia, how uneven development determines "winners and losers", as well as how students can pursue research on their own.

Michael Dwyer was an Instructor in Geography at the �������� (2018-2019) and an Associated Senior Research Scientist with the University of Bern’s Center for Development and Environment (CDE). A political ecologist by training, Mike has worked on resource governance and development politics in Southeast Asia since 2004, and is particularly interested in the intersection of agrarian change, regulation, and international relations. His work has been published in a variety of journals, books and working-paper series focused on development, geography and resource governance.

CAS Faculty Interview: Dr. Katherine Alexander

Katherine Alexander discusses her research on Chinese literature and how her childhood influenced how she chose her field of study.

Katherine Alexander received a BA with honors in Physics and East Asian Languages and Cultures from Beloit College, and an MA and PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago. Her PhD dissertation, "Virtues of the Vernacular: Moral Reconstruction in late Qing Jiangnan and the Revitalization of Baojuan" addresses popular religious literature and culture in Jiangnan during and after the Taiping War. Many caught up in the turmoil believed the destruction to be heaven-sent judgment for society’s ills. The perceived high stakes of moral reform – averting future disasters and shoring up the Qing against collapse – made for a fertile environment in which vernacular morality literature like baojuan proliferated. In addition to revising this dissertation for publication, she is currently working on a project addressing how Qing imperial narratives of female chastity were interpreted and adopted in the frontier city Taiwanfu (present day Tainan, Taiwan), building on the themes developed in her dissertation about the role of religion in supporting or destabilizing the state and prescriptive moralities aimed at female audiences.

CAS Faculty Interview: Adam Lisbon

Adam Lisbon discusses his research in "onboarding" and efficient workflows and how his personal hiring experience influenced his research.

Adam manages the Japanese and Korean Collections at the University libraries. He teaches research skills in literature, history, language, and across many other disciplines as they relate to Japanese and Korean Studies. If you have students whose research skills you want to improve, you can email him to set up a session for your class. If you need an in depth discussion on supporting your research of Japan, Korea, or other matters, you can use his calendar to schedule a consultation. Adam also specializes in managing multilingual sources of information with the Juris-M software.

The University Libraries’ acquisition of books, journals, and a variety of media and electronic sources in Japanese and Korean are coordinated by Adam. Your suggestions for additional materials for our vernacular or English language collections are welcome any time. Adam earned his B.A. in Japanese studies at the University At Albany. After graduating, he participated in the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program (JET) for three years. He then returned to his alma mater pursuing his masters in Library and Information Science. His research areas include how scholarship is conducted in multilingual contexts as well as the intersection between information literacy and Japanese language education.