Dušica Ristivojević (June 2024-June 2026)
Dušica Ristivojević 杜娟華 is a visiting scholar at Department of Cultures. Between 2019-2023, she was Kone Foundation Bold Initiatives Senior Researcher at the University of Helsinki. Before moving to Helsinki, Dušica worked as a lecturer in International Development at Dong-A University, South Korea, a lecturer in Gender Studies at the Central European University, Budapest-Vienna, and as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. She was a Chevening Fellow at the University of Oxford, MOFA Taiwan Fellow at the National Taiwan Normal University, and has served as a consultant for a number of in/formal organizations based in East Asia.
Dušica works in the areas of interdisciplinary Chinese studies, media studies, and international relations. She wrote and spoke on a number of topics: from longue duree observations of China´s repositioning in the modern world order, transnational and regional support networks of Chinese social activists, and politics of women´s and human rights, to the unconventional writing of China’s political history, dis/connections between academic education and social engagement, and the absence of the “second world” in de- and post/colonial discussions. Recently, she started to look closely into the partnerships between Chinese and the local actors in Central and Eastern European (CEE) region, as well as into the local civic initiatives and protests related to China’s presence in the CEE.
Sophie Qiaoyun Peng (March 2024 — February 2025)
Dr Sophie Qiaoyun Peng is a visiting fellow at the University of Helsinki (Department of Cultures). She is a Tallinn-based textile historian and an affiliated researcher at the University of Glasgow (School of Social & Political Sciences). She was an INREES visiting PGR fellow at Aleksanteri Institute (University of Helsinki, 2023) and a Dora+ visiting PhD scholar at Institute of Culture Studies and Arts (University of Tartu, 2022). She serves as a committee member for The Nordic and Baltic Network on Intangible Cultural Heritage in year 23/24.
Dr Peng’s current research activities focus on lace, oral history of heritage crafts, preservation of Intangible Cultural Heritage, and the Nordic-Baltic region. She is also interested in topics that are related to minority identities and symbolism in material culture.
Hang Kei Ho (October 2023-September 2024)
Dr Hang Kei Ho is Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is also Visiting Professor of Chinese Studies in the Department of Cultures at the Faculty of Arts, and Associate Professor of Sociology (Title of Docent) at the University of Helsinki.
His research themes include capital flows within global property markets, changing paradigms of the drinks and fashion industry, the globalisation of wine, housing policy and urban segregation, inequality and the super-rich, luxury consumption and brand management, and pandemic management strategies. Dr Ho has worked in academic positions in Finland, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK, lecturing across the fields of anthropology, Asian studies, business management, development studies, economic geography, public health, sociology, and urban studies. He holds a PhD, an MBA, and three master’s degrees in multiple academic disciplines including arts and humanities, electronic engineering, geography, and luxury brand management.
The peer-reviewed article authored by Dr Ho and Prof Rowland Atkinson, titled Looking for big ‘fry’: The motives and methods of middle-class international property investors, has won the Academy of Hong Kong Studies 2018/2019 Outstanding Paper Award. His latest edited book (with Prof David Inglis), titled Drinks in Vogue: Exploring the Changing Worlds of Fashions and Beverages (Routledge, 2024), maps out the changing paradigms within the global fashion and beverage industry. Prior to entering academia, Dr Ho worked in real estate consultancy, IT, and engineering.
Dana Rice (September- October 2023)
Dana Rice is a PhD Candidate and Lecturer in International Relations at the Australian National University. She previously studied at the European University at Saint Petersburg (Russia), where she remained involved for several years as the Editor-in-Chief of ENERPO (Energy Politics of Eurasia) Journal. Most recently, Dana has held visiting fellow positions at KIMEP University (Kazakhstan) and the Weizenbaum Institute (Germany).
Dana’s research focus is China-Central Asia relations and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Over the last six years, she has researched and published on many aspects of BRI, from hydrocarbon investments to popular perceptions.
Lu Zhang 张露 (September 2022 – August 2024)
Lu Zhang is a PhD candidate in Art History at the University of Nottingham, the UK. Her research focuses on the history of collecting and exhibiting Chinese art outside China from the late 19th century till now, as well as the cultural diplomacy and art repatriation of the Chinese government in different historical periods. Coming from a hybrid background of Journalism and Art History, Lu has studied at Nanchang University in China (BA, 2010) in China, the School of Oriental and African Studies University of London (MA, 2011) in the UK, and Institut d’études supérieures des arts (MA, 2017) in Paris. She has work experience in media, art gallery, and academia as a journalist, editor, curator, and teacher.
In the academic year 2021-22, she worked as a teaching affiliate in the Department of Cultural, Media and Visual Studies of the UoN in Visual Culture of the Sixties: Culture & Counterculture (fall term) and Memory, Media and Visual Culture (spring term). At the same time, she was a research associate at the Digital Transformation Hub at the UoN, leading the Archaeology Slide Digitalisation Project. Lu is a winner of the UoN Asian Research Institute Postgraduate Research Award in 2022, which allowed her to conduct her archival research on the 1935 International Exhibition of Chinese Art at the Royal Academy of Arts London.
Bruce Dame Laoera (September 2022)
Bruce is a PhD Student in Doctoral School of Humanities at Jagiellonian University, Poland. Her research focuses on digital activism and social movements in Indonesia. She studied English Literature for her Bachelor’s degree and obtained Master of Arts in Culture Studies at Airlangga University, Indonesia. Her working experiences are mostly in academic teaching and conducting research, focusing on media, film, culture, and gender studies. Moreover, she worked in an NGO that involved in women’s empowerment in Indonesia. From 2019-2021, she also worked in the School of Liberal Arts at Mae Fah Luang University, Chiang Rai, Thailand. During her time in Thailand, she was active in participating in discussions and conferences related to social and political studies in Asia. Currently, she is doing a visiting research program funded by Una Europa “Digitalized” in September 2022 at Helsinki University. This research visit aims not only to develop and advance her doctoral research but also to learn and gain more knowledge about media, activism, and social movement in Asia.
Jiang Chang (January-December 2022)
Jiang CHANG is visiting professor of Chinese studies at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at Shenzhen University (China), and adjunct professor at Tsinghua University (China). Prof. Chang holds a PhD of communication studies from Tsinghua University (China) and Northwestern University (US). He has also accomplished post-doctorate research at the University of Geneva (Switzerland). Prof. Chang is widely published in English, Chinese and French on topics that include journalism and propaganda, digital media cultures, and digital feminism in contemporary China. His representative works are published in leading journals such as International Journal of Cultural Studies, European Journal of Cultural Studies, Journal of Contemporary China, Feminist Media Studies, etc. Prof. Chang also serves as secretary-general of the Chinese Association for History of Journalism and Communication (CAHJC), and deputy chief commissioner of the Chinese Association for Television Art & Culture.