Recent Alumni

Wei Mei (Nicolette) Wong

Nicolette Wei Mei Wong is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in anthropology with a focus on intimacy, technology, and China. Her current project looks at the impact and affordances mobile platforms like dating apps have on existing social mores surrounding intimacy.

Research interests: Human-computer interaction, user experience research, gender studies, technology, intimacy, family studies, urban China

 

Publications

Wong, W. M. (2019). The politics of pity versus piety: The poetics and politics behind different feminist accounts on the Muslim Woman. Journal of Islamic and Middle Eastern Multidisciplinary Studies. 6 (1), 1-25.

Wong, W. M. (2016). Parental matchmaking: Is it really such a selfless act after all? A case analysis of China’s marriage markets. Asian Profile, 44(4), 315-325.

Wong, W. M. (2016). Past matchmaking norms and their influence on contemporary Marriage Markets in China. Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, VIII(3), 371-383.

von Gleichen, R., Barker, C.E., Bowen, C.S., Larsen, O., Shillabeer, O., Tan, G. Y., Wong, W.M., & Youssef, A. (2016). Affordable childcare when you need it? Childcare opening hours in the context of the Childcare Act 2016.

Wong, W.M., Chung, S.; Guidi, L., Goh, M.S., Jiang, Y., Miklos, M., & Stinton, H. (2016). British Chinese secondary students and racial bullying: Understanding British Chinese students’ racial bullying experience in secondary schools. OxPolicy.

Wong, W. M. (2015). Consumer preferences between hypermarkets and traditional retail shophouses: A case study of Kulim consumers. Asian Profile, 43.

Wong, W. M. (2014). Finding “love” in China: An overview of Chinese marriage markets (BaiFaXiangQin). Student Pulse, 6(12).

Wong, W. M. (2014). AirAsia's application of the 'Thirty-six stratagems'. Undergraduate Research Journal for the Human Sciences, 13(1).

Degrees and Education

MSc Sociology, University of Oxford
BBA International Trade, Central China Normal University

Awards

2020 Predissertation Travel Grant from the Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Program in China Studies (2020)
Chancellor’s Graduate Fellowship in China Studies (Academic Year 2020)
Chancellor’s Graduate Fellowship in China Studies (Academic Year 2018-2019)
International Studies Fund Grant (Summer 2018)
University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Anthropology Graduate Student Small Grants for Research (Summer 2018)
Chancellor’s Graduate Fellowship in China Studies (Academic Year 2017-2018)
Khazanah - Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies Merdeka Scholarship (2017)
CCNU Distinguished Student Scholarship 华中师范大学优秀学生奖学金 (Academic Year 2011-2015)
Outstanding Academic Achievement Award CCNU, CICE (2015)

Juan Carlos Vargas

Juan Carlos Vargas is interested in the relationship between intensive agricultural production and the emergence of leadership in the South American lowlands. To pursue this issue he is carrying out a systematic regional settlement study of some 250 sq km in the municipality of Yopal in the Llanos of Casanare (Colombia) in order to compare the developmental trajectories of these early complex societies with those from the Llanos of Barinas (Venezuela). His aim is to advance understanding of just how these trajectories differed from each other, and how these differences emerged in two parts of the same broad environmental zone in the Orinoco basin. His research is supported by the National Science Foundation and will collaborate with the local Cataruben Foundation to help further its aims of environmental and heritage management and research. The project's results will comprise a heritage inventory for the survey area, which will aid in protecting these cultural resources. PhD 2017!

Degrees and Education

PhD - Anthropology - University of Pittsburgh (2017)

Chao Zhao

My research focuses on transitions in human behavior from the Upper Paleolithic to the Neolithic in North China and is tied to broader research questions about how people respond to the pronounced environment change during this time and what drives people in certain regions towards food production and plant/animal domestication. I focus on the combination of lithic and spatial analyses to explore issues like human mobility, land use strategy, subsistence intensification and cultural transmission.

Degrees and Education

MA - Archaeology - Peking University, Beijing, China (2015)
BA - Archaeology - Jilin University, Changchun, China (2010)

Junyang Cao

My name is Junyang Cao (曹俊阳). I come from Henan, China, and I received my Bachelor’s degrees in Archaeology at Zhengzhou University in 2015. I am interested in hunter-gatherer and environment interactions and the ways in which hunter-gatherers adapt to paleoenvironmental fluctuations in East Asia, with a focus on the subsistence shifts of hunter-gatherers in arid and semi-arid North China during Upper Paleolithic period. I have a passion for lithic micro wear analysis in revealing the function of lithic tools and the evolution of human behavior. And I am also interested in conducting experiments such as flint knapping and plant harvesting to experience hunting-gathering life! Currently I am working with Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Ningxia Institute of Cultural Relics and Archeology in Pigeon Mountain, Ningxia, with a focus on how the evolution of stone toolkits reflect the hunter-gatherer behavior such as mobility and settlement patterns.

Degrees and Education

MA - Anthropology - University of Pittsburgh (2018)
BA - Archaeology - Zhengzhou University, China (2015)