I'm an interdisciplinary PhD candidate and qualitative researcher in modern Chinese and Taiwanese history and society, migration studies, and international higher education. I also teach academic writing across the social sciences and humanities, have taught English as a second language (ESL) and English as medium of instruction (ESL) social science courses, and advise students and faculty on the hazards and changing expectations surrounding the use of generative AI for university coursework.

Some of my personal endeavours and interests include creative and nonfiction writing, classic and indie films, cooking/cuisine, and travel of the sort that genuinely stretches one's comfort zone and challenges one's assumptions. I am also something akin to a summer camp counsellor for two young, energetic cats. All of this is worth mentioning because being an academic is only one component of my whole identity.

Additionally, I am an assistant for the Academic Integrity Matters (AIM) Program at UBCO, in which we treat academic misconduct cases as learning experiences (as opposed to moralizing or policing conduct) and advise students on Western academic culture and the unwritten curriculum. Further still, I am a graduate affiliate with the Centre for Migration Studies at UBC's Vancouver campus, was a Liu Scholar via UBC's School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, and was a 2021-2022 fellow in the Chinese Language Fellowship Program at the National Bureau for Asian Research (NBR), during which I took intensive Mandarin coursework at National Taiwan University 國立臺灣大學. Prior to my PhD program, I was an English lecturer at Dongbei University of Finance and Economics 东北财经大学 in northeast China, and before that, an assistant ESL/EFL (English as a second/foreign language) instructor in southern California.

I am currently writing my dissertation on my field research investigating the bounded rationality and decision-making processes of Taiwanese university students who are planning their future academic and career courses amid both socioeconomic and geopolitical precarities. (I have recently been awarded the 2025 Marjorie Peace Lenn Research Award for this research.) My other research and pedagogical projects include: the role of the intelligentsia-regime relationship in the political evolution of both China and Taiwan; immigration and security policy discourses in the Five Eyes states (the US, Australia, Canada, the UK, and Aotearoa/New Zealand), especially concerning research collaboration versus competition with China; and the practice of teaching academic writing in an age when students are being encouraged to use so-called AI technology to write for them. (See the Projects tab for details.)