James Gerien-Chen (History) received a Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad award, which he will use to conduct six months of research in Taiwan and Japan from January-June 2023. He will use the grant to revise a book manuscript titled Between Nation and Empire: Migration and Law in the Making of Japanese Empire in Taiwan, South China, and Southeast Asia, 1895–1950. The book examines the transregional migration of colonial Taiwanese and their role in shaping Japanese imperial expansion, Chinese state-building, and the development of overseas Chinese networks. He is especially grateful for the grant's support of multi-sited, transnational research, as his project draws on materials from archives and libraries across the two countries. He looks forward to engaging with academic communities abroad and drawing on his experience to shape his course offerings in East Asian history when he returns to UF.
Professor James Gerien-Chen (Ph.D. Columbia University, 2019) is a historian of modern Japan, China, and Taiwan with research and teaching interests in comparative empires and imperialism; migration and diaspora; and borderlands and urban history. He offers survey courses on modern Japan and East Asia and thematic courses on empires and imperialism, migration, borderlands, and capitalism. Before joining the History Department at the University of Florida, he was the Dorothy Borg Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University.