With another academic year upon us, we’re excited to welcome new members to our Asian Studies family! Learn more about each of our new faculty below.
Renisa Mawani – Professor in Colonial Legal Histories
Renisa Mawani is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Colonial Legal Histories. She is the author of Colonial Proximities (University of British Columbia Press, 2009) and Across Oceans of Law (Duke University Press, 2018), which was a finalist for the U.K. Socio-Legal Studies Association Theory and History Book Prize (2020) and winner of the Association of Asian American Studies Book Prize for Outstanding Contribution to History (2020).
Aya Yamakawa – Lecturer in Japanese Language
Aya Yamakawa is a Lecturer of Japanese Language and holds an M.A. in Education from Earlham College in the United States. She has taught Japanese language and culture in the United States, Japan, Australia, India and Israel. Her teaching and research interests include queer pedagogy, intercultural communication, and community-centered language education.
Jiaqi Yao – Lecturer in Modern Chinese Literature, Media, and Popular Culture
Jiaqi Yao is a lecturer in Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia, specializing in modern Chinese literature, media, and popular culture. Her first book project, In Search of the Real China: Republican Travelers in the Western Borderlands, 1921–1945, offers a compelling re-evaluation of how China’s “authentic” identity was constructed at its periphery. The project argues that this national knowledge emerged not merely from top-down state propaganda, but through a decentralized multimedia network of travelers, publishers, and local elites. Their collective works—including pictorials, films, and travel magazines—transformed encounters in the borderlands into the very authentications of the Chinese nation.
