Current Graduate Fellows

Joshua Allen is a second-year PhD student in the Department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies. With former lives as a playwright, poet, and policy-oriented researcher focused on violent conflict and migration in Asia and the Middle East, Josh is currently building an undisciplined research program that wanders freely among trans and queer ecologies, Marxist geographies, transnational/decolonial feminisms, food studies, and science and technology studies.

Ziqi (Kathleen) Li is a doctoral student in the Department of Learning and Instruction, where she specializes in Language Education and Multilingualism. Her research interests include teaching and teacher education, learning and teaching in culturally and linguistically diverse contexts, and language teachers’ identity construction and professional development.

Sharmeen Mehri is a seventh-year PhD candidate in the Department of English at UB. Her research examines Parsi writing and its intersections with critical archive studies and book history. She was a fellow for the South Asian American Digital Archive in 2021-2022, for which she collected oral histories and created an online museum exhibit on migration stories of South Asian Zoroastrians to the United States entitled, Memories We Carry. She is a Junior Fellow in the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at the Rare Book School and part of the Bibliographical Society of America’s 2025 New Scholars program.

Ray Shi is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Educational Culture, Policy, and Society program whose research sits at the intersection of educational anthropology and East Asian studies. Her work explores how education reflects and reinforces broader political and economic structures, while also leaving space for individual agency and identity-making. Her current projects focus on the experiences of Mandarin language teachers working in U.S. K–12 schools and the spatial vulnerabilities of international schools in China under changing geopolitical and ideological conditions. Her research interests are wide-ranging, and she is currently engaged in an ethnographic project on funeral practices and ecological imaginaries in southern China. Feel free to reach out if you are interested in her work.

Shawnie Sun is a PhD student in Human Geography. Her research focuses on recycling in China’s green transition, with interests in urban political ecology, critical sustainability, labor geography, and feminist approaches.

Bingwan Tian is a Graduate Fellow at the Asia Research Institute and a PhD candidate in the Graduate School of Education at the University at Buffalo. Her research focuses on inclusive and special education in both Asian and U.S. contexts. As an international student from China, her previous studies focused on special education issues in China, including inclusive education practices influenced by the Learning in Regular Classrooms (LRC) policy. Her current research examines the experiences of Asian immigrant parents, particularly those of Chinese and Indian backgrounds, raising children with disabilities. She investigates how these parents navigate educational systems and access resources to provide their children with effective support and equitable educational opportunities. Feel free to contact her if you're interested in her research!

Vi Trinh is a second-year PhD student in the Curriculum, Instruction and Science of Learning program. Her research interest lies in comparative and international education, with particular interest in curriculum studies between the Vietnamese and U.S. contexts.