Teaching Faculty
Dr. Jason Abbott, Political Science, Southeast Asia
Aung San Suu Kyi Endowed Chair, Center for Asian Democracy
Director, Center of Asian Democracy
Associate Professor, Political Science
Dr. Jason Abbott joined the university in July 2010, after previously holding positions at The University of Surrey, The School of Oriental and African Studies at The University of London, and the Department of International Studies, Nottingham Trent University. He is the author/editor of five books and over 20 articles and book chapters on issues of democratization, economic development, political economy and regional security in Southeast Asia (and Malaysia in particular). He is also an experienced broadcaster and has provided interviews to a range of media organizations, including the BBC 24, BBC World Service, CNN, Al-Jazeera and Voice of America as well as consultancy advice to Research Analysts at the Foreign Office of the United Kingdom, Oxford Analytica, and the International Transport Workers Federation (a study on the impact of globalization with Dr. Frank Faulkner, University of Derby).
Research: Comparative Democratization • Comparative Politics • Political Economy • International Security • Political Organizations and Parties • International History and Politics • Religion and Politics, Race • Ethnicity and Politics • Elections and Voting Behavior • Political Communication • Information Technology and Politics.
Room 204, Stevenson Hall • 502-852-6832 • Email • Website
Moon-he Baik, Fine Arts, 
Associate Professor of Interior Architecture
Professor Baik graduated with a B.F.A. from Ewha University, in Korea, in 1981. She earned her M.F.A. at the University of North Texas in 1989. She has taught courses at the University of Seoul, in Korea and continues to work in interior design.
Teaching Areas: ART 105, 361, 563, 564, 567, 596
Dr. Lisa Björkman, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Urban and Public Affairs
Dr. Lisa Björkman joined the Urban Affairs faculty at University of Louisville in 2015. Dr. Björkman’s research has been based primarily in the Indian city of Mumbai, where she studies how global processes of urbanism and urban transformation are redrawing lines of socio-spatial exclusions and inclusions, animating new arenas of political mobilization, contestation and representation. Her first book Pipe Politics, Contested Waters: Embedded Infrastructures of Millennial Mumbai (Duke University Press, 2015) was awarded the American Institute of Indian Studies' 2014 Joseph Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences. Dr. Björkman has recently edited a special issue of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research titled “Engineering cities: mediating materialities, infrastructural imaginaries and shifting regimes of urban expertise” (February 2018), in which she authored both theoretical introduction and an ethnographic article titled ““The Engineer and the Plumber: mediating Mumbai’s conflicting infrastructural imaginaries.” Dr. Björkman is preparing two book new book manuscripts for submission this summer: the first is titled Bombay Brokers: anthropological theory from the ethnographic edge; the second Afterlives of World Class Ruins: an Anthropology of the Future. A third in-progress ethnographic monograph, titled Mass Political Theatre: an anthropology of representation in Mumbai, is in progress. Dr. Björkman is currently a Fulbright Scholar affiliated with the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II.
http://louisville.edu/upa/people/profiles/lisa-bjorkman-ph-d
Urban and Public Affairs, room 119
502-852-7929
Ying Kit Chan, Fine Arts, Southeast Asia
Professor Department of Fine Arts
Director of the Hite Art Institute
Professor Ying Kit Chan received his BFA from the University of Oklahoma (1981) and MFA from the University of Cincinnati (1983). From 2003 to 2005, he attended the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee (Switzerland) and Paris, and studied with some of the world's most visionary thinkers including the late Jacques Derrida and Jean Baudrillard, as well as American intellectuals Judith Butler and Donna Haraway.
For over three decades, Professor Chan has been exhibiting his art work in over 200 exhibitions in the United States as well as in Hong Kong, Australia, Canada, Ecuador, Germany, Korea, Japan, England, Poland, Taiwan and Portugal. Professor Chan has received several public awards and fellowships including two Kentucky Arts Council Al Smith Visual Arts Fellowships (1994 and 2002), a National Endowment for the Arts/Southern Arts Federation Visual Arts Fellowship (1992) and an Urban Council Fine Arts Award at the Hong Kong Contemporary Art Biennial (1977).
Professor Chan was the Conference Chair of the first Foundation in Art: Theory and Education (FATE) national conference (1986) and later served as the President of FATE (1995-97). He also served as the Chair of Studio Sessions for the SECAC/MACAA Joint Conference in 2000, and was a member of the Professional Practices Committee of College Art Association of America (2003-06).
At the University of Louisville, Professor Chan was the Head of the Studio Programs at the Hite Art Institute from 1997 to 2010, and served as the Chairperson of the Department of Fine Arts and the Director of the Hite Art Institute from January 2011 to June 2016. Currently he is an affiliate faculty member of the Asian Studies program, the Social Change program, the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research and the Center for Asian Democracy. He is a member of the Humanities PhD Program Steering Committee and the University Sustainability Education and Research Committee.
Website: yingkitchan.com
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Research: Contemporary practices in drawing • Digital media and new media studies • Contemporary art issues • Cross cultural and critical theories • Chinese arts theory and criticism • Ethics, aesthetics and semiotics • Analytic and Continental aesthetics • Sustainability and environmental ethics
Lutz Hall, Room 144 • 502-852-0806 •
Nan-Ting Chou, PhD, Economics
Associate Professor
Research: Public Communication Campaigns • Children and Television • Global Mass Media
College of Business, Room 158 • (502) 852-4840 • Email • CV
Julianne Chung, Ph.D., Philosophy
Assistant Professor
, Philosophy
I obtained my PhD from Yale University in December of 2015. My dissertation was entitled "Epistemic Fictionalism" and my committee included Keith DeRose (advisor), Zoltan Szabo (advisor), Daniel Greco, Jay Garfield, and Laurence Horn. I previously earned a BA (Honours) and MA in Philosophy from the University of Calgary (in 2007 and 2009, respectively). My primary areas of research are epistemology, the philosophy of language, and metaphysics. I am especially intrigued by questions having to do with skepticism, fictionalism, and metaphor, as well as how cross-cultural philosophy can shed new light on them. I am also interested in whether (and how) works of art--and, in particular, literature--can have cognitive content, and what the philosophical upshots of this might be. In addition, I serve as associate editor of Oxford Studies in Epistemology (eds. John Hawthorne and Tamar Gendler). In the past, I have also been involved with teaching philosophy to pre-college aged students and taught an introductory logic and philosophy of science course that formed part of the Yale Pathways to Science Summer SCHOLAR Program.
Office: 336D Bingham Humanities Building
Margaret D’Silva, Communication, Southeast Asia
Professor of Communication
Margaret D'Silva earned her Ph.D. at the University of Kentucky. Her research interests include intercultural communication and the effects of mass media. She is the author of the book, HIV/AIDS prevention and health communication. (with Hart, J. L., & Walker, K. L). She is also the General editor for Intercultural Communication Studies. She received the Presidential Exemplary Multicultural Teaching Award for the University of Louisville in 2006.
Kristopher Grady, Ph.D., Political Science
Assistant Professor, Political Science
Undergraduate Advisor, Political Science
Second Floor, Room 202, Ford Hall, Bellknap Campus • 502-852-1928 • 502-852-7923 • Email
Shiping Hua, Political Science, East Asia
Dr. Shiping Hua, originally from China, is the Calvin and Helen Lang Distinguished Chair in Asian Studies and Director of the Asian Studies Program at the University of Louisville.
He has authored and edit/co-edited 9 books in English,including Chinese Utopianism: A Comparative Study of Reformist Thought in Japan and Russia1898-1997 published by Stanford University Press in 2009 and Scientism and Humanism: Two Cultures in Post-Mao China1978-1989 published by the State University of New York Press in 1995.
He is the general editor of three book series: Comparative Asian Politics published by Routledge, Asia in the New Millennium with University Press of Kentucky annually in English and Contemporary World’s Classics: Political Science Series published annually with Renmin University Press in Chinese.
He is currently Council Member of the Association of Asian Studies. Dr. Hua is a guest professor with China’s Shanghai Jiaotong University, Jilin University, and Nankai University.
Office: Guy Stevenson Hall, Room 402.
Phone: (502) 852-3305
Email:shiping.hua@louisville.edu
Delin Lai, Art History, Southeast Asia
Assistant Professor
Before joining the faculty of the Department of Fine Art in 2007, Professor Delin Lai taught at Oberlin College from 2006 to 2007. Dr. Lai specializes in modern Chinese architecture and has published two books: Jindai Zhejiang Lu (Who’s who in modern Chinese architecture, 2006), which was one of the ten books that received the First Architectural Book Award of China in 2008, and Zhongguo Jindai Jianzhushi Yanjiu (Studies in modern Chinese architecture, 2007). Professor Lai also published many articles in both Chinese and English, among them are “Searching for a Modern Chinese Monument: the design of the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing, 1925-1929” in The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (March, 2005) and "Renewing, Remapping, and Redefining Guangzhou, 1910s - 1930s" in Looking Modern: East Asian Visual Culture from Treaty Ports to World War II (Jennifer Purtle and Hans Bjarne Thomsen, eds., 2009).
Research: modern Chinese architecture
Michael M. Losavio, J.D., Criminal Procedure and Law, Computer Forensics
Michael M. Losavio is an attorney working on issues of law, ethics and society and information security in the computer engineering and justice administration disciplines He works with the Department of Justice Administration and the Department of Computer Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Louisville in teaching and training in these areas. He has worked for the Administrative Office of the Courts of the Kentucky Court of Justice and the federal Legal Services Corporation and served as the Jefferson Circuit Court Clerk in 2006.
He teaches and publishes on the synthesis of legal/ethical precepts and social science data with computer engineering, digital forensics and computing's impact on judicial and legal practice. Mr. Losavio also works on curriculum development for conferences, courses and seminars on the impact of information and computing systems in a variety of disciplines.
He holds a J.D from Louisiana State University Law School, and a B.S. in Mathematics, also from Louisiana State University, U.S.A.
Research: synthesis of legal/ethical precepts
Yuxin Ma, Chinese History
Associate Professor of East Asian History
Yuxin Ma is an Associate Professor of East Asian history. Her specialties are late imperial and Republican China and Chinese women’s history. Currently Ma studies the lives, screen performances, and media reports of Man’ei actresses, and explores the intersections between gender, Japanese imperialism and culture modernity in Manchukuo. Ma has taught courses on Traditional China, Modern China, Modern Japan and East Asian Women’s History. Yuxin Ma’s research interest is women’s history in modern China. Her monograph Women Journalists and Feminism in China1898-1937 (Cambria, 2010) explores how women journalists broke down the gender segregation in the public sphere and produces historical accounts of the social changes around them and in their own lives.
Research: women’s history in modern China
Room 103 B, Gottschalk Hall • 502-852-6817 • Website
John McLeod, History, Southeast Asia
Professor of History
Most of Dr. McLeod's research is on the history of India during the colonial period. He has published three books: Sovereignty, Power, Control: Politics in the States of Western India, 1916-1947, which came out in 1999; The History of India, published in 2002; and African Elites in India, co-edited with Kenneth X. Robbins and released in 2006. He is now working on two more books, Indian Tory: A Biography of Sir Mancherjee Merwanjee Bhownaggree (that's him below), and Rajmandal: Historical and Genealogical Notes on the Royal Families of South Asia. He has also written articles and book reviews in American, Australian, British, Canadian and Indian journals. Since coming to U of L in 1995, he has taught courses on the History of Civilizations; British Imperialism; Civilizations of Ancient and Medieval India; Civilizations of Modern India; English History; the English Monarchy and the Birth of the Modern Age (which culminated in a two-week trip to England); the History of India; Royalty in Indian History (which included a trip to India); and Victorian Britain.
Research: Great Britain • British Empire • South Asia
Room 103 E, Gottschalk Hall • (502) 852-6817 • Email • Website
Patrick Pranke, Religion, South and Southeast Asia
Assistant Professor in Humanities (Religious Studies)
Patrick Pranke received his PhD at the University of Michigan. Dr. Pranke holds a Ph.D. in Buddhist Stuides from the University of Michigan, currently he is an Assistant Professor of Humanities at the University of Louisville. His area of specialization is Burmese Buddhism and Burmese popular cults, research for which he conducted over the course of several years in the Sagaing Hills, Upper Burma. In addition to his experiences in Burma, Dr. Pranke has been a teacher and administrator on the University of Wisconsin's College of the Year India Program, and Antioch College's Buddhist Studies Program in North India, and he maintains strong academic interests in Hindu fold traditions.
Research: Burmese Buddhism • Burmese popular cults
Room 200 F, Bingham Humanities • (502) 852-7140 • Email • Website
Wei Song, Geography, Chinese Geography
Professor of Geography & Geosciences
Professor Song attended Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.
Research: Location Analysis, Transportation Geography, Urban Crime Issues, Quantitative Methods, Geographic Information Systems Applications, Geography of China
Hiromi Taniguchi, PhD, Sociology
Hiromi Taniguchi is an associate professor of sociology whose current studies include cross-national comparisons of attitudes about children, and the interface between paid work and family life. She also studies civic engagement of various forms (e.g., volunteering, charitable giving, social protest) in the US and Japan.
109 Lutz Hall • Email• (502) 852-8005
Areas of research/expertise: sociology of work and family, voluntary sector research | CV
Yi Jasmine Wang, Communication
Assistant Professor of Communication
Dr. Yi Jasmine Wang earned her Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Connecticut and a M.A. in Television-Radio-Film from Syracuse University. She is an active storyteller interested in the cognitive and emotional factors in the processing and effectiveness of health and risk messages across different cultures and contexts. She also studies new media technology and social change, with a special interest in the impact of social media usage and online participation in China.
Currently, Dr. Wang teaches Video Communication, Media, Cognition and Message Design and Documentary Production in the Communication Department.
Yi Jasmine Wang, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
University of Louisville
Department of Communication
308B Strickler Hall
Louisville KY 40292
Li Zeng, Chinese Language and Society
Associate Professor of Chinese
Dr. Zeng received his Ph.D. in Chinese Literature at the University of Toronto. He is the Director of the Chinese Studies Program at the University of Louisville.
Research: Chinese culture, Chinese civilization, and Chinese language and theatre.
Haifeng Zhang, Geography, Chinese Geography
Assistant Professor of Geography and Geosciences
Professor Zhang studied at the University of South Carolina.
Research: Crime Mapping • Spatial Demography • Race/Ethnicity • Education Issues • GIS, Quantitative Methods
Andrew Zhao, Anthropology, China
Assistant Professor, Ph.D.
Professor Zhao studied at the University of Pittsburgh.
Research: Globalization • capitalism • family and kinship • social change • clothing and the clothing industry • anthropological political economy • China
Charles Ziegler, Political Science, Central Asia and Russia Far East
Professor of Political Science
Director, Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order
Distinguished University Scholar
Professor Ziegler was born in farm country near Plymouth, Indiana and graduated from a public high school there in 1971. Most of his professional life has been spent in Louisville. He taught at a small college in Florida for one year before coming to UofL in 1980. He also lived in California, Great Britain and South Korea, and traveled throughout Europe, Asia, and parts of Latin America. His hobbies include music, biking, hiking, pool volleyball, Taekwondo, and raising an energetic boy. Some publications include “The History of Russia, 2nd edition” (Greenwood Press, 2009), “Civil Society, Political Stability, and State Power in Central Asia: Cooperation and Contestation,” Democratization, Vol. 17, Issue 5 (2010) and “Russia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus after the Georgia Conflict,” in Roger E. Kanet, ed. Russian Foreign Policy in the 21st Century (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). He earned his Bachelor's degree in Political Science at Purdue University, his Masters in Political Science and his PhD in Political Science at the University of Illinois. He teaches topics on Russia and Eurasia, the Politics of Oil, Comparative Political Culture, Theories of Comparative Politics, and Democratization.
Research: Comparative Politics • Political Economy • Foreign Policy • Comparative Democratization • Russia and Eurasia.