Graduate student profiles

Name	Research interests
Sahar Alshehri	Sahar’s research focuses on to what extent did the cultural and social contexts of the Qur’ān commentators influence their interpretation of the Qur’ānic verse 4:34? Be examining a number of commentaries on the Qur’ān by scholars from different orientations and schools of thought with a particular focus on the Qur’ānic text 4:34.
Jasmine Barrett	Jasmine’s research focuses on the development of the disability sector in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Her dissertation is tentatively titled, “Disability in the DPRK: Identity, social inclusion, and changing perceptions of disability".
Jasmine Chang	Jasmine’s research focuses on the political economy of Taiwan’s media industry and its interactions with journalism and foreign affairs. Her research examines how different voices from Taiwanese media outlets have impacted its public diplomacy.
Simon Christie	Using a descriptive framework and data collected during fieldwork , Simon’s thesis examines and describes the phonological, morphological, and grammatical system of the southern dialect of the Bai language as spoken in and around Dali, a city in the province of Yunnan, China. Simon’s other research interests include First Language Acquisition, particularly the role that gesture plays in this process.
Ary Hermawan	Ary's research examines how the contest for hegemony within civil society shapes the form and level of internet control in Indonesia. It does so by critically analyzing online defamation cases, digital attack incidents, and selected case studies of narrative warfare in post-authoritarian Indonesia. It combines several research methods — social network analysis, critical discourse analysis and qualitative interview — to examine the contest for hegemony between intra-oligarchic interests as well as oligarchic and counter-oligarchic ones and how it shapes the regime of digital control in Indonesia.
Hassan Shuaib	There is a growing concern about stagnation in the interpretation of the Qur’an and Sunnah in our modern period. This concern has led to a deep-seated contention among Muslims on the possibility of a new interpretation of these two sources. This study aims to explore the most significant conceptual and methodological contributions of an influential jurist of the Ḥanbalī school of jurisprudence Ibn Qudāmah (d. 620/1223) to the interpretation of the ethical-legal texts of the Qur’an and Sunnah. It will demonstrate the extent to which his inputs can be used to interpret a range of ethical-legal texts of the Qur’an and Sunnah in today’s context to ensure a conformity to modernity within the spirit of the existing framework of Islam.
David Bryan Lozada	This research examines how human rights are orchestrated by international actors, and mobilised by the urban poor survivors (UPS) and civil society organisations (CSOs) in contesting the war on drugs in the Philippines. I investigate the pathways UPS and CSOs use in contesting the war on drugs to provide insights on how the global governance of human rights are implemented at the local level.
Yahia Zhengtang Ma	Situated at the intersections of Queer Theory and Translation Studies, my research project examines the presentation of male same-sex desire in Sinophone literature and how its representations in English translation can be queered and de-queered. With textual analysis of the translations of desire in a selection of novels written by Chinese-speaking authors dating from the 1990s and interviews with translators and scholars who translate queer texts and/or research on queer translation, this research ultimately aims to demonstrate in what ways queer translation can be done in practice and in theory.
Akina Mikami	Akina’s thesis examines how civil society practice shapes notion of disaster resilience through a translocal approach. It conducts a case study of Fukushima-Cairns recuperation practice in 3.11 disaster recovery politics. It argues that translocal practice of radical care decouples the notion of disaster resilience from principles of neoliberal nationalism that underpin state-led reconstruction. Engaging with debates on political ethics of care, posthumanism and disaster justice, it proposes a ‘care’ perspective in rethinking civil society and disaster resilience. In this project, Akina adopts an action research paradigm that seeks both action and understanding through a cyclic, participative and reflective co-inquiry process.
Scott Musgrave-Takeda	Okinawa remains at the centre of an ever changing security environment. The islands are host to the highest concentration of United States military bases in the world. Since the end of World War II, displeasure with the presence of the US military has been a common theme to Okinawan discourse, political and civil. Understanding the identities of civil society members opposed to bases not only on Okinawa but also on mainland Japan will provide a basis to find how to create a more empowering narrative that not only Okinawans but also mainland Japanese can plug into to promote positive social change for a hot button issue that continues to go unsolved.
Leiheng Wang	Leiheng’s research focuses on the national identity and nationalism in East Asia. In her postgraduate studies, she paid attention to the comparison of collective memory in Mainland China, Taiwan, and South Korea. Currently, Leiheng focuses on conducting the comparison of national identity in Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau from the perspective of history education.
Wanyi Xue	My research interest is poverty governance in China’s ethnic minority areas. Since 2016, I have carried out research on Targeted Poverty Alleviation (TPA, Chinese: 精准扶贫) campaign in Shaanxi, Guizhou and Guangxi in mainland China, and carried out field work for many times. With the completion of the Chinese government’s TPA campaign by the end of 2020, China’s poverty alleviation work will reach a new level in 2021. Therefore, my current research topic is poverty governance in China after 2020, that is, the study on the aftermath of TPA campaign.