Staff

East Asia National Resource Center (NRC)

Eric Schluessel is a social historian of China and Central Asia, and his work focuses on Xinjiang (East Turkestan) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Land of Strangers, his first monograph, uses local archival and manuscript sources in Chinese and Chaghatay Turkic to explore the ramifications of a project undertaken in the last decades of the Qing empire to transform Xinjiang’s Turkic-speaking Muslims into Chinese-speaking Confucians.

Schluessel is currently pursuing two research projects: Saints and Sojourners explores the economic history of the Uyghur region from the 1750s through the 1950s as seen from below, through the records of merchants, farmers, and managers of pious endowments. It ties changes at the village level to shifts in the global economy in places as far away as Manchester and Tianjin. Exiled Gods delves into Han Chinese settler culture and religion to illuminate the history of a diasporic community of demobilized soldiers and their descendants that spanned the Qing empire.

Thanks to grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies, Schluessel is also completing a translation and critical edition of the Tārīkh-i Ḥamīdī of Mullah Mūsa Sayrāmī, which is an important Chaghatay-language chronicle of nineteenth-century Xinjiang.

Schluessel previously taught at the University of Montana in Missoula and spent the 2018–2019 academic year as a Mellon Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.

1957 E Street, NW, Suite 503M
Washington, DC 20052
E-mail: schluessel@gwu.edu

Professor Celeste Arrington specializes in comparative politics, with a regional focus on the Koreas and Japan. Her research interests include law and social change, governance, civil society, social movements, policy-making processes, lawyers, the media and politics, and qualitative methods. She is also interested in the international relations and security of Northeast Asia and transnational activism.

Her first book was Accidental Activists: Victim Movements and Government Accountability in Japan and South Korea (Cornell, 2016). She has published articles in Comparative Political Studies, Law & Society Review, Journal of East Asian Studies, Law & Policy, Asian Survey, and elsewhere. With Patricia Goedde, she co-edited Rights Claiming in South Korea (Cambridge, 2021). Her current book project analyzes the legalistic turn in Korean and Japanese governance through paired case studies related to tobacco control and disability rights. 

Her research has received support from numerous fellowships and programs. She is a core faculty of the GW Institute for Korean Studies (GWIKS) and President of the Association for Korean Political Studies. GW’s Office of the Vice President for Research awarded her the 2021 Early Career Research Scholar Award.

1957 E St. NW, Suite 503L

cla@gwu.edu

Sean Dolan is the Assistant Programs Director for the Asian Studies Suite at the Elliott School. In his role, he oversees budgeting, grants management, and financial and administrative matters for the GW Institute for Korean Studies (GWIKS), the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, the GW East Asia National Resource Center (NRC) and for various Asian Studies programs and faculty members. Sean graduated from the University of Georgia with a B.A. in International Affairs and French. After college, he first moved to Korea as an English teacher and then completed an M.A. in International Relations at Sogang University in Seoul. After graduate school, he spent several years working for an international education company in Texas, where he managed admissions for study abroad programs in Korea and several other countries. He later returned to Seoul to direct on-site operations for study abroad programs in Korea. Prior to moving into his current role, Sean previously served as the Program Manager for GWIKS.

1957 E St. NW, Suite 503

seandolan@gwu.edu

Dr. Lisa Lackney is the Program Associate for the East Asia National Resource Center. She graduated from Vanderbilt University in 2020 specializing in Japanese cultural history; her primary research is on the emotional experience of modernity in Japan during the 1920s-1930s.She has written and presented on a variety of topics including transhumanism in anime, Boy’s Love manga, and samurai films.

1957 E Street, NW, Suite 503N
Washington, DC 20052
Tel: (202) 994-5874
E-mail: lisa.lackney@gwu.edu

Robert Kincaid is the Program Coordinator for the East Asia National Resource Center.  He graduated from American University in 2021 majoring in International Relations with a regional focus of East Asia and the Pacific and specializes in cross-strait relations and the U.S-China relationship. His research interests also include U.S- Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) relations. He has previoiusly worked in international exchange programming and has experience assisting with the coordination and execution of the State Department’s Young Southeast Asian Leaders Association (YSEALI).

1957 E Street, NW, Suite 503N
Washington, DC 20052
E-mail: r.kincaid@email.gwu.edu

Ziming (Owen) Wang is the K-12 Outreach Assistant for the East Asian National Resource Center. He earned his BA diploma in Philosophy and International Affairs.  He is currently enrolled in a MA program in International Affairs with concentration in Conflict Resolution. He has been a teaching staff to middle school students and a coordinator for K-12 Model United Nations conferences in China. 

1957 E St NW, Suite 503,

Washington, DC 20052

Email: zimingxlf@gwu.edu

Eve Danishevsky is the Communications Assistant for the East Asian National Resource Center. She is a freshman at the Elliott School of International Affairs pursuing a B.S. in International Affairs. She hopes to specialize in Central Asian affairs and engage with the broader Asia region. She has previously studied abroad on the Department of State FLEX Abroad scholarship in Almaty, Kazakhstan. 

1957 E St NW, Suite 503,

Washington, DC 20052

Email: eveleen.danishevsky@gwu.edu

GW Institute for Korean Studies (GWIKS)

1957 E Street, NW, Suite 503O

Washington, DC 20052

E-mail: rmu123@gwu.edu

1957 E Street, NW, Suite 503O
Washington, DC 20052
E-mail: takara.askew@gwu.edu

Sigur Center for Asian Studies

1957 E Street, NW, Suite 503P

Washington, DC 20052

E-mail: abubanich@gwu.edu

East Asian Languages & Literatures

Department Chair, The Korea Foundation and Kim-Renaud Associate Professor of Korean Language and Culture Studies

Dr. Immanuel Kim is a specialist in North Korean literature and cinema. His research focuses on the changes and development, particularly in the representations of women, sexuality, and memory, of North Korean literature from the 1960s to present day. His book Rewriting Revolution: Women, Sexuality, and Memory in North Korean Fiction explores the complex and dynamic literary culture that has deeply impacted the society. His second book called Laughing North Koreans: Culture of the Film Industry is on North Korean comedy films and the ways in which humor has been an integral component of the everyday life. By exploring comedy films and comedians, Dr. Kim looks past the ostensible propaganda and examines the agency of laughter. Dr. Kim has also translated a North Korean novel called Friend by Paek Nam-nyong.

801 22nd Street, NW
Rome Hall 452
Washington, DC 20052
E-mail: ikim52@gwu.edu