Researchers

Victor V. Ramraj |
(on sabbatical until 30 June 2023)
Law Chair (2014-present); Director (2017-present)
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Law
- Project lead: Regulating Globalization in South and Southeast Asia; Southeast Asia in Global Context, South Asia Global Forum; various
- ramraj
@uvic .ca - @vvramraj

Guoguang Wu / 吴国光 / 吳國光 |
China Chair (2004-2022)
- Faculty affiliations: UVic Political Science; UVic History
- Project lead: China program
- wug
@uvic .ca
CAPI Senior Research Fellows are established academic researchers and/or prominent members of the community who have extensive experience in the Asia-Pacific. They lead major, longer-term research projects and contribute to the intellectual life of the Centre and broader university, organizing events, serving as mentors to CAPI's junior fellows, graduate students and interns, and sitting on CAPI committees.

Neilesh Bose |
Senior Research Fellow
- Term: 2017 - present
- Faculty affiliation: UVic History
- Project lead: Global South Colloquium; South Asia Global Forum (+ liaison for the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute)
- nbose@uvic.ca
- @NeileshBose
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Dr. Bose's research and teaching interests include the history of modern South Asia (the Indian subcontinent), the British Empire, decolonization, and the history of diasporas and migrations. Additionally, he hold interests in theater, performance studies, and popular culture. His first book examined the intersections between linguistic identity and Muslim religious community formation in late colonial Bengal. His current project explores the history of religious reform in colonial India and ways that Indian religious reformers studied local religious practices in the service of a broader universalism. Dr. Bose joined the University of Victoria in 2015 as Tier II Canada Research Chair in Global and Comparative History.

Phil Calvert |
Senior Research Fellow
- Term: 2017 - present
- Project lead: Southeast Asia in Global Context
- @PhilCalvert2
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Philip Calvert served from 2012-2016 as Canada's ambassador to Thailand, Cambodia and Laos. He previously served as Deputy Head of Mission in the Canadian Embassy in Beijing (2004-2008). From 2008-2012, as Director General in Ottawa, he managed Canada’s overall trade and political relations with North Asia (China, Japan, Korean peninsula, Hong Kong, Mongolia and Taiwan). He holds a PhD in Chinese history.

Daniela Damian |
Senior Research Fellow
- Term: 2021 - present (previously a CAPI Associate since 2018)
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Department of Computer Science
- Project lead: Inspire: STEM for Social Impact
- @DanaHDamian
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Daniela Damian is a Professor of Software Engineering in University of Victoria’s Department of Computer Science, where she leads research in the Software Engineering Global interAction Laboratory (SEGAL, thesegalgroup.org). Her research interests include Software Engineering, Requirements Engineering, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Empirical Software Engineering. Her recent work has studied the developers’ socio-technical coordination in geographically distributed software projects, as well as stakeholder management in large software ecosystems. Daniela’s research methodologies involve extensive field work and in-situ studies of software teams through collaborations with industrial partners such as IBM, General Motors, Siemens and Dell. Daniela has served on the program committee boards of several software engineering conferences, as well as on the editorial boards of Transactions on Software Engineering, the Journal of Requirements Engineering, the Journal of Empirical Software Engineering, and the Journal of Software and Systems.

Helen Lansdowne |
Associate Director
- Project lead: International Youth Leadership Program; Migration and Mobility Program; various
- 250-721-7021

Jordan Stanger-Ross |
Senior Research Fellow
- Term: 2021 - present
- Faculty affiliation: UVic History
- Project lead: Landscapes of Injustice
- jstross@uvic.ca
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Jordan Stanger-Ross is the project director for Landscapes of Injustice, a seven-year, multi-partner research project housed at CAPI exploring the forced dispossession of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War. He is associate professor of history at the University of Victoria. He is a former Chair of the Canadian Committee on Migration, Ethnicity, and Transnationalism, which is affiliated with the Canadian Historical Association, and founded UVic’s Committee for Urban Studies, which initiated the interdisciplinary lecture series, The City Talks.

Feng Xu |
Visiting China Researcher (2022-23); Senior Research Fellow
- Term: 2021 - present
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Department of Political Science
- Project lead: Migration, Mobility, and Displacement Journal
- fengxu@uvic.ca
- @fengxu44660233
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Dr. Feng Xu is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria. She specializes in Comparative politics and the Global South (China). Her current research interests concern feminist political economy, migration and urbanization, and labor market.
She is the editor-in-chief of Migration, Mobility & Displacement, CAPI's online, open access academic journal. She also serves on CAPI's Steering Committee.

Marlea Clarke |
Senior Research Fellow
- Term: 2017 - 2021
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Political Science
- Project lead: Asia in Africa; Migration and Mobility Program
- mjclarke@uvic.ca
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Marlea specialises in comparative politics and the Global South (particularly Africa). Her broad research interests are globalisation, employment and labour market restructuring from a comparative and feminist political economy perspective, regional (African) clothing production networks, and south-south labour migration and investment (specifically Asia-Africa). Her current, SSHRC-funded, five-year research project focuses on changing patterns of trade and global production of clothing, especially regional production networks and labour standards in sub-Saharan Africa. This research includes an exploration of the role of Asian migrant workers in clothing production in Lesotho and Mauritius, and Asian investment in African clothing and textiles industries.

Meyer Aaron |
- CAPI Associate since 2020

Jessica Ball |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic School of Child and Youth Care
- CAPI Associate since 2013

Sikata Banerjee |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Gender Studies
- CAPI Associate since 2017

Melia Belli Bose |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Art History & Visual Studies
- CAPI Associate since 2017

James Boutilier |
- CAPI Associate since 2000

Leslie Butt |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Anthropology
- CAPI Associate since 2020
- CAPI Visiting Scholar: 2012-2017

Angie Chau |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Pacific and Asian Studies
- CAPI Associate since 2019

Raveendra Chittoor |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Gustavson School of Business
- CAPI Associate since 2017

Marlea Clarke |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Political Science
- CAPI Associate since 2021 (previously a CAPI Senior Research Fellow)

Deborah Curran |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Law
- CAPI Associate since 2019

Phil Dearden |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Geography
- CAPI Associate since 1994

Donna Greschner |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Law

Jingjai Hanchanlash |

Simi Kang |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Gender Studies
- CAPI Associate since 2021

Asad Kiyani |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Law
- CAPI Associate since 2019

Willy Wo-Lap Lam |
- CAPI Associate since 2022
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Dr Lam has been an Adjunct Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Centre for China Studies, History Department and the Master’s Program in Global Political Economy) since 2007. He is also a Senior Fellow at Jamestown Foundation, a foreign-policy think tank in Washington D.C. With 40 years of experience writing and researching about China, Willy Lam is a recognized expert on areas including the Chinese Communist Party, elite politics, Chinese foreign policy and foreign economic relations, as well as the country’s economic and political reform.
The veteran Sinologist has published seven books on China, including Routledge Handbook of the Chinese Communist Party (Routledge, London, 2018); Chinese Politics in the Era of Xi Jinping (Routledge, London, 2015); Chinese Politics in the Hu Jintao Era (M.E. Sharpe, New York, 2006); and The Era of Jiang Zemin (Prentice Hall, Singapore & New York, 1999). His new book, The Fight for China’s Future (Routledge, London), came out in 2020.
Dr Lam has a B.A. and Master’s in Buddhist Studies from the University of Hong Kong; an MA in China studies from the University of Minnesota; and a Ph.D. in political economy from Wuhan University, China. His views on China, China-U.S. and China-Taiwan relations as well as other current affairs are regularly cited by the New York Times, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail, The Straits Times, Bloomberg, the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.

Jae Woon Lee |
- CAPI Associate since 2020

Sujin Lee |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Pacific and Asian Studies
- CAPI Associate since 2019

ann-elise lewallen |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Department of Pacific and Asian Studies
- CAPI Associate since 2021

Carol Liao |
- CAPI Associate since 2020

Qian Liu |
- CAPI Associate since 2020

Isabel Lloyd |
- CAPI Associate since 1999

Andrew Marton |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Pacific and Asian Studies
- CAPI Associate since 2017
- CAPI Director: 2014-2017

Ted McDorman |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Law
- CAPI Associate since 1988

Catherine Morris |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Law
- CAPI Associate since 2001

Renée Mulligan |
- CAPI Associate since 2019

Sudhir Nair |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Gustavson School of Business
- CAPI Associate since 2019

Sada Niang |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic French
- CAPI Associate since 2017

Midori Ogasawara |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Sociology
- CAPI Associate since 2021

Pooja Parmar |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Law
- CAPI Associate since 2017

Thanh Phan |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Law
- CAPI Associate since 2020

Cody Poulton |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Pacific and Asian Studies
- CAPI Associate since 2017

Supriya Routh |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Law
- CAPI Associate since 2017

Daromir Rudnyckyj |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Anthropology
- CAPI Associate since 2019

Hugh Stephens |

Reeta Tremblay |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Political Science
- CAPI Associate since 2017

Jeremy Webber |
- Faculty affiliation: UVic Law
- CAPI Associate since 2019

Can Zhao |
- CAPI Associate since 2022

Dulma Karunarthna |
- Home institution/position:
Former Senior Lecturer, Archaeology, University of Peradeniya (until January 2021) - Country:
Sri Lanka - Duration of visit:
September 2021 to present - CAPI designation:
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow
Bio
Dr. Karunarathna was a Lecturer with the Department of Archaeology at the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka from 2002-2021. She was a Commonwealth Scholar and completed her PhD at Newcastle University (UK) in 2015 with a focus on the "social archaeology of gender as depicted in visual art forms in South Asia." Her current research project is a cultural examination of a Sri Lankan palm-leaf manuscript that unveils the hidden history of color and the shared cultures, cultural diversity and socio-cultural geography of South and Southeast Asia.
Publications and outputs
- Cultural heritage and risk assessments: Gaps, challenges, and future research directions for the inclusion of heritage within climate change adaptation and disaster management. Climate Resilience and Sustainability, 2022. DOI: 10.1002/cli2.45
- Storymap: Climate story telling in Sri Lanka
- Empowerment of Women in Rural Sri Lanka. Global Research and Action Agenda on Culture, Heritage, and Climate Change. 2022.

Jiangmei Song |
- Home institution/position:
Lecturer of Law, Changchun Normal University - Country:
China - Duration of visit:
August 2022 to August 2023 - CAPI designation:
Visiting Research Fellow
Bio
Dr. Song is a Lecturer of Law at Changchun Normal University in China. She was a senior court judge at the Higher People’s Court of Jilin Province and has tried over 1,000 cases in the field of civil and commercial law. During her time at UVic, Dr. Song plans to research Canada’s successful practices in international dispute resolution, including the role of mediation and arbitration in effectively resolving cases and how this might be applied in China’s International Commercial Courts. She will also investigate the ways in which reasonable boundaries can be established between the jurisdictions of China’s International Commercial Courts and their domestic foreign-related commercial courts.

Yasuyuki Kishi |
- Home institution/position:
Associate Professor of Economics and Vice Director of the Sakeology Center at Niigata University - Country:
Japan - Duration of visit:
September 2022 to August 2023 - CAPI designation:
CAPI Japan Chair Visiting Research Fellow
Bio
Dr. Yasuyuki Kishi is Associate Professor of Economics and Vice Director of the Sakeology Center at Niigata University, Japan. He has research interests in globalization, Small and Medium Enterprises, human resource management and cross-cultural studies. His current research focuses on globalization of cultural products and organizational behavior of sake breweries in terms of institutional theory. During his time at UVic, Prof Kishi will be examining sake diffusion in Canada. Prof. Kishi will deliver a couple of guest lectures focusing on sake industry’s internalisation activities for Prof. Endo’s course entitled ‘Japan in the context of globalization’.

Masumi Izumi |
- Home institution/position:
Professor, Faculty of Global and Regional Studies, Doshisha University - Country:
Japan - Duration of visit:
September 2022 to March 2023 - CAPI project:
Past Wrongs Future Choices
Bio
Dr. Izumi specializes in the history of Japanese migrants and their descendants in North America. Her work involves analyzing texts, such as diaries and letters, written by those uprooted and incarcerated during the war, to see how they perceived themselves and the world around them. Through this, Dr. Izumi hopes to transnationalize the notion of nationalism. She is very happy to be back on the UVic campus, where she previously spent two years as an exchange Ph.D student.

Shohei Hamamatsu |
- Home institution/position:
Associate Professor, Faculty of Business Administration, Seikei University - Country:
Japan - Duration of visit:
September 2022 to August 2024 - CAPI designation:
CAPI Japan Chair Visiting Research Fellow
Bio
Shohei Hamamatsu is an Associate Professor with the Faculty of Business Administration at Seikei University, Tokyo, Japan. Prof Hamamastu’s research interests include business strategy, international business, entrepreneurship, traditional industry in Japan, global strategies of small and medium-sized enterprises, and the startup ecosystem in Japan. During his time at UVic, Prof Hamamatsu will be investigating community-based entrepreneurship and the internationalization of Japanese food producers. He will provide a guest lecture for Prof. Endo’s class in 2023.

Sujin Lee |
- Home department/position:
Assistant Professor, UVic Department of Pacific and Asian Studies - Duration of visit:
July to December 2021 - CAPI project:
Visiting faculty program
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Dr. Lee's research mainly concerns the population discourse in the Japanese colonial empire, with a particular focus on birth control, eugenics, and the production of motherhood.
During her CAPI visitorship, she plans to hold a workshop on the politics of population in Asia. This workshop aims at creating a critical dialogue between Asian societies about how different modes of politics - e.g., governmentality, scientific rationality, gender politics, and globalization - regulate the quantity, quality, and mobility of population(s). To facilitate a transnational dialogue on the question of the political dimension of population discourses, she intends to invite scholars whose work concerns the historical or contemporary politics of population control and reproductive technologies in different Asian societies.

Daniela Damian |
- Home department/position:
Professor, UVic Computer Science - Duration of visit:
July to December 2021 - CAPI project:
Visiting faculty program
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Dr. Daniela Damian is a Professor of Software Engineering in University of Victoria’s Department of Computer Science, where she leads research in the Software Engineering Global interAction Laboratory (SEGAL). Her research interests include Software Engineering, Requirements Engineering, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Empirical Software Engineering.
During her CAPI visitorship, Daniela, in collaboration with UVic Anthropology professor Daromir Rudnyckyj, will be undertaking a project examining developments in money and technology in Asia, with a focus on fintech and data privacy.

Ploykaew Porananond |
- Home institution/position:
Lecturer, Faculty of Law, Chiang Mai University - Country:
Thailand - Duration of visit:
June to October 2021 - CAPI project:
Regulating Globalization in South and Southeast Asia
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Dr. Porananond (PhD, University of Glasgow) is the Director of the Center of ASEAN Transnational Studies at the Faculty of Law, Chiang Mai University. Her research interest is comparative competition law and the enactment and enforcement of competition laws in Southeast Asia and within new jurisdictions. Her book, Competition Law in the ASEAN Countries: Regional Law and National Systems (Wolters Kluwer) was published in 2018. During her stay at UVic, Dr. Porananond will be working on her current project exploring globalization of the goals of competition law, which looks into the interaction between the economic oriented goal of competition law advocated by matured competition law jurisdictions and more socially and politically inclusive ones adopted by younger jurisdictions.

Kitpatchara Somanawat |
- Home institution/position:
Lecturer, Faculty of Law, Chiang Mai University - Country:
Thailand - Duration of visit:
June to October 2021 - CAPI project:
Regulating Globalization in South and Southeast Asia
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Kitpatchara Somanawat is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Law at Chiang Mai University, Thailand, specializing in legal history, legal philosophy, social theory and constitutionalism. During his UVic stay, he will be using primarily historical methods to compare the traits of First Nations and Thai judges.

Pema Wangdi |
- UVic department of study:
UVic Law - Home institution:
Jigme Singye Wangchuck School of Law - Country:
Bhutan - Duration of visit:
July 2020 to April 2021 - CAPI project:
Regulating Globalization in South and Southeast Asia
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Pema Wangdi is a PhD student at the Law and Society Program at UVic and a Canadian Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Advanced Scholar (QES-AS). He is a senior lecturer and one of the founding faculty members at the Jigme Singye Wangchuck (JSW) School of Law, Bhutan’s first law school.
Pema has been working on the law school project since 2011, which led to its opening on July 3, 2017, when the law school welcomed its first cohort of 25 students to the campus. He has designed and taught the philosophy course for the law students and also co-designed and taught the Political Science Course. He is also part of the committee who is designing the Gross National Happiness and the Law Course, which is considered to be the capstone of the JSW School of Law Curriculum.
Prior to this current job, Pema worked as a Managing Director of a Radio Station popularly known in Thimphu, Bhutan as Kuzoo FM, the Voice of the Youth. He has also worked as a curriculum writer and audio/visual producer for the Ministry of Education. Apart from that he has an experience of teaching from Kindergarten to the University level. He received his teaching training from Samtse College of Education, Bhutan and studied Cinema, TV, Stage and Radio from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology in Alberta. He received his BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Rangsit University, Thailand and MA in Philosophy from Fordham University, NY USA.

Songkrant Pongboonjun |
Blog posts |
- UVic department of study:
UVic Law PhD - Home institution:
Chiang Mai University - Country:
Thailand - Duration of visit:
September 2018 to August 2020 - CAPI project:
Regulating Globalization in South and Southeast Asia
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Songkrant is a PhD student at the Law and Society Program at the University of Victoria and a Canadian Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Advanced Scholar (QES-AS). Songkrant was an environmental lawyer who practiced law in Thailand for ten years and then shifted to teach law at Chiang Mai University, Thailand, since 2016. His worked was about empowering local people to protect their environment, natural resources, and their health and also encouraging young lawyers to engage in public interest lawyering, especially in environmental field. He is interested in the interaction between formal legal institutions, such as legal texts, judiciary, and informal institutions such as local communities, public interest lawyers, academy that leads to create law in action, in order to find the best way to expand civil liberties and civil rights. His tentative thesis title is “Creating Rights from the Bottom: The Case of Environmental Public Interest Lawyers in Thailand”. This work will investigate the roles and impacts of public interest lawyers in developing environmental rights in the context of developing country like Thailand.

Ratana Ly |
Blog posts |
- UVic department of study:
UVic Law PhD - Home institution:
Royal University of Law and Economics - Country:
Cambodia - Duration of visit:
September 2017 to August 2020 - CAPI project:
Regulating Globalization in South and Southeast Asia
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Ratana Ly is a PhD candidate in the UVic Faculty of Law. She completed her LLB at the Royal University of Law and Economics, Cambodia, and LLM at the Nagoya University, Japan. She then worked as a researcher at the Center for the Study of Humanitarian Law in Cambodia, focusing her research on international human rights, international criminal law, labor migration, and refugees. Observing the recent booming of construction in Cambodia, she is keen to explore the relationship between this business sector with labor rights, migration, gender, and the environment. In her spare time, she enjoys taking long walks. Ratana is looking forward to the exciting challenges and opportunities, which will come her way during the program, and learn as she goes. Ratana is particularly grateful to CAPI, the QES-AS scholarship, and UVic for the funding and other support, which allow her to undertake these studies.

Nima Dorji |
Blog post |
- UVic department of study:
UVic Law PhD - Home institution:
Jigme Singye Wangchuck School of Law - Country:
Bhutan - Duration of visit:
September 2017 to August 2020 - CAPI project:
Regulating Globalization in South and Southeast Asia
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Nima Dorji is a PhD student at the Law and Society Program at the University of Victoria and a Canadian Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Advanced Scholar (QES-AS). He is a senior lecturer and one of the founding faculty members at the Jigme Singye Wangchuck (JSW) School of Law, Bhutan’s first law school. Nima has been working on the law school project since 2014, which led to its opening on July 3, 2017, as the law school welcomed its first cohort of 25 students to the campus. Before joining JSW, Nima worked as a Legal Officer at Bhutan National Legal Institute (BNLI). He was one of the founding staff members of BNLI, managing UN-funded activities and legal dissemination programs. He received his BA and LLB (Hons.) degrees from NALSAR University of Law in India in 2009, his Postgraduate Diploma in National Law (PGDNL) from the Royal Institute of Management, Bhutan, in 2010, and his Master of Laws (LLM) from the University of Canberra, Australia, in 2014

Vandanet Hing |
- Home institution:
The Center for the Study of Humanitarian Law, Royal University of Law and Economics - Country:
Cambodia - Duration of visit:
January to June 2020 - CAPI project:
Regulating Globalization in South and Southeast Asia

Ly Anh Hoang |
- Home institution:
Hanoi Law University - Country:
Vietnam - Duration of visit:
November 2019 to February 2020 - CAPI project:
Regulating Globalization in South and Southeast Asia

Tiasa Basu Roy |
- Home institution:
MPhil in History, University of Calcutta, India - Duration of visit at UVic:
June to August 2019 - CAPI project:
South Asia Global Forum

Shane Barter |
- Position, home institution:
Associate Professor of International Studies, and Director of the Pacific Basin Research Center, Soka University, California - Duration of visit at UVic:
June to August 2019

Ramesh Bairy T.S. |
- Home institution:
Associate Professor of sociology at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India - Duration of visit at UVic:
2019 - CAPI project:
South Asia Global Forum

Sunayana Ganguly |
Blog post |
- Home institution:
Azim Premji University - Country:
India - Duration of visit:
May to August, 2018 - CAPI project:
Regulating Globalization in South and Southeast Asia

Sushmita Pati |
Blog post |
- Home institution:
Azim Premji University - Country:
India - Duration of visit:
May to August, 2018 - CAPI project:
Regulating Globalization in South and Southeast Asia

Yashomati Ghosh |
- Home institution:
Associate Professor at the National Law School of India University - Duration of visit at UVic:
September to October 2017 - CAPI project:
South Asia Global Forum