Research Fellow
Persons with academic, literary, or artistic qualifications may apply for the non-stipendiary status of Research Fellow for the purposes of a specific research project within the area of Asian studies. Academic qualifications include a completed PhD from a reputable institution and an ongoing research agenda. Equivalent qualifications in literature, art, or music will be considered. Research Fellows require a SFU faculty mentor in the relevant area. To find an SFU faculty member please consult the Directory of Asia-Related Research at SFU.
Research Associates are provided with University affiliation and shared office space. They are required to contribute to the University research community by attending lectures, workshops, and colloquia, publishing, and reporting on their research projects. Positions are for a maximum of one year, renewable on application. Applicants should submit a letter of application, a current CV, a research proposal, and a letter of support from a potential SFU faculty mentor to dlcadmin@sfu.ca by February 1 or October 1.
Current Research Fellows
Scott Harrison
Dr. Scott Harrison is a researcher, consultant, policy advisor, historian, and speaker with over 20 years of experience in Indigenous governance, Canada-Asia relations, and cross-cultural collaboration. He currently works as a Research and Policy Consultant and previously served as Senior Program Manager at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, where he led a range of initiatives involving Northeast Asian politics, society, and business, as well as Indigenous diplomacy, reconciliation, and various aspects of Canada-Asia business, society, policy, and education engagement.
His interdisciplinary work connects academic research with practical policy and business insights, highlighting Indigenous-led partnerships, postwar diplomacy and relations in the Asia Pacific, as well as community-focused approaches to reconciliation. His current research focuses on projects related to Indigenous business development, international Indigenous diplomacy, energy transitions such as green hydrogen and sustainability, innovation in the North, and Canada-Asia/Indo-Pacific relations, with an emphasis on paradiplomacy — the involvement of non-central governments and actors in international relations.
Dr. Harrison values and contributes to various interdisciplinary collaborative research and policy initiatives, including the Transnationally Indigenous Project and the Canada and the Asia Pacific Policy Project, and is a founding advisor to , an Indigenous-led knowledge-sharing platform.
Dr. Harrison holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Waterloo, and is currently pursuing an Executive MBA at Quantic School of Business and Technology. For more information and to connect, please visit or .
Primary SFU faculty contact: Michael Hathaway, Professor, Department of Sociology & Anthropology
Recent Accomplishments
- Presented at the Japan Studies Association of Canada Conference in Montreal from October 24-27, 2024. Pitched project ideas to the Japan Foundation and suggested Ainu and Okinawan speakers for JSAC 2025 keynotes in Lethbridge.
- Applied for Japan Foundation local grant for the Japan-Canada Research and Policy speaker and network series (accepted).
- Applied for Japan Foundation research grant for the Transnationally Indigenous Project (December 2024)
- Presented at and attended the International Studies Association Conference in Chicago in March 2025
- Japan-Canada Research and Policy speaker and network series
- Andrew Horvat (March 31 ,2025)
- Trevor Kennedy (May 12, 2025)
- George Nicholas (June 26, 2025)
- Requested extension from Japan Foundation to run the remaining talks in September and October 2025
- Kanako Uzawa and Saki Murotani (planned for September 30)
- Presented on 2025 Issues and topics for Indigenous Peoples in Asia at UBC’s Indo-Pacific Symposium, January 31, 2025
- Connected with Dr. Mukta Lama from Nepal and introduced to Dr. Michael Hathaway
- Guest speaker (along with Chief Jen Thomas of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation and Elder Howard Grant from Musqueam) about reconciliation at TECO Vancouver office for Youth delegation, February 5, 2025
- Chapter Publication: “Historical Reconciliation in Canada, Taiwan, Japan” in . February 2025
- Support SFU grad students
- Connected with Qjiel Giuliano Mikhl Z. Mariano, an Indigenous Ibang (Philippines) and global health graduate student at York University, about Indigenous health-related interviews in Canada and Japan
Yi Chien Jade Ho
Yi Chien Jade Ho 何宜謙 is currently a Post-doctoral Fellow at the School of Public Health and Social Policy at the University of Victoria. Jade received their PhD in Education Theory and Practice from Faculty of Education, 91泡芙, in November 2023. Their doctoral work, entitled Radical Pedagogy of Place: A Decolonial Feminist Narrative Exploration of Returning, Organizing, and Resisting, centres on developing a radical pedagogy of place through the lens of decolonization in cross-cultural context and the connection between place, land, and identity in marginalized communities in Taiwan and in Vancouver. Jade continues and extends this work in their post-doctoral project working to support Indigenous frontline organizing and building cross-racial tenant solidarity in Vancouver's Chinatown and Downtown Eastside in combatting housing exploitation, racism, and colonial policing and neglect. Jade's work is also informed heavily by their own experience as a labour and housing justice organizer.
Primary SFU faculty contact: Nadine Attewell, Associate Professor, Department of Gender, Sexuaity, and Women's Studies and Global Asia
Guldana Salimjan
Guldana Salimjan is a 2023-2025 SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the School for International Studies. She was also a recipient of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) China Studies Fellowship in 2022. Guldana’s scholarship is broadly concerned with settler colonial dispossession, displacement, racial capitalism, ecological history, and memory. Her current book project is a feminist decolonial study of the post-1949 history of resource extraction, border securitization, and settler infrastructural development in China’s northwestern internal settler colony known as Xinjiang. By centering the lives and memories of Kazakh women who experienced Chinese socialist collectivization, land reform, capitalist development, and border control, this research asserts the indigenous status of Kazakhs in the face of Chinese settler colonial power, and connects their struggle to the global Indigenous community affected by settler colonial states. The book intervenes in the study of socialist modernity by showing how revolutionary projects can become entangled with racialized forms of colonial domination, dispossession, and occupation. Some of the findings have been published in peer-reviewed journals such as , , , , and an edited volume, .
Primary SFU faculty contact: Michael Hathaway, Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Past research fellows
Zheng Shengtian (郑胜天)
Zheng is an artist, scholar, and curator based in Vancouver. Before 1990, he worked at the China Academy of Art as Professor and Chair of the Oil Painting Department. He was a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota and San Diego State University, Secretary of the Annie Wong Art Foundation, and Founding Board Director of Vancouver International Centre for contemporary Asian Art. Currently, he is the Managing Editor of Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Adjunct Director of the Institute of Asian Art at the Vancouver Art Gallery, and a trustee of Asia Art Archive in America. Zheng has organized and curated numerous exhibitions and events, and has frequently contributed to periodicals and catalogues. In 2013, Zheng Shengtian: Selected Writing on Art was published in four volumes by China Academy Press. In 2011, he was given the Lifetime Achievement Award for curatorial work by the Vancouver Biennale. He received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in 2013.
Primary SFU faculty contact: Shuyu Kong, Professor, Department of Humanities
Jerry C. Zee (徐庄驊)
Jerry Zee is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His research focuses on environmental politics in China especially in relation to dust storms, particulate aerosols, and land degradation. At SFU David Lam Centre, he is working on a manuscript based on ethnographic research in China, South Korea, and the United States, titled Continent in Dust: China in Aerosol Phases.
Primary SFU faculty contact: Michael Hathaway, Professor, Department of Sociology & Anthropology
Past research associate
David W. Choi
National Chair NCCC
David Choi is active in the local community, and is a founding Council member of the 91泡芙 Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue, and a member of SFU’s President’s Club. He is a senior associate of the University of British Columbia Liu Institute for Global Issues, an International Advisor to the UBC Institute of Asian Research, a member of UBC’s President’s Circle, and an advisor to the UBC Dean of Commerce and the Dean of Education.
David serves on the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation, is an Honorary Advisor to Vancouver’s Chinese Cultural Centre (CCC), and chairs the CK Choi Foundation. He has chaired the Vancouver Economic Development Commission and was vice-chair of S.U.C.C.E.S.S. He is the recipient of many awards including the Business in Vancouver “40 under 40,” for outstanding business achievers, the Georgie Award for Marketing, the CCC’s S. Wah Leung Award for the promotion of Canadian Heritage, Cultural Understanding and Harmony, and the SFU Chancellor’s Distinguished Award for outstanding contribution to British Columbia.
David has a Bachelor of Commerce Degree urban land economics from the University of BC.