PhD students mobility

Abigayil Blandon is a PhD candidate at Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC), Stockholm University. She is working on a research project entitled “APSUS: alternative pathways to sustainable seafood” which investigates alternative ways to achieve sustainable seafood in country contexts where the typical certification scheme approach is not effective. She is working in collaboration with the University of Tokyo and using Japan as an important case study country to investigate alternative approaches. She uses mixed methods to investigate different approaches and perceptions about sustainable seafood, and looks at innovative case studies where actors are working towards seafood sustainability in different ways.

Abigayil has a background in marine conservation and sustainable seafood work in both academic and non-academic institutions. She has worked for a government advisory agency in the UK, as a project researcher at the University of Tokyo, and most recently for WWF-UK leading the sustainable seafood work with their retailer partner Tesco. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge, and completed her MSc “Social ecological resilience for Sustainable Development” at the SRC.

Abigayil was a visiting PhD student at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies in November 2023.

Yicheng Cheng is a PhD Candidate in Sinology at Freie Universität Berlin working on comprehending contemporary China. Focusing on the society of Hainan island, his current PhD project aims to offer both empirical knowledge and theoretical enhancement on the changing dynamics of social stratification and social relations associated with its economic development. His main research method is ethnographic fieldwork, and I’m actively discovering the epistemological boundaries and interactions among different disciplines (anthropology, political science, sociology and geography) and area studies via ethnographic practices. 

Previously he gained his BA in International Development and East Asian Studies from McGill University with an exchange year in the University of Tokyo, and his Master in Political Science from Sciences Po Paris.

Yicheng was a visiting PhD student at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies in May 2023.

Jonathan Krämer is a PhD student at the Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University. His research concerns the intersection of health and labour migration in Southeast Asia. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in various locations in Indonesia and Malaysia with a particular focus on mandatory medical examinations for Indonesian labor migrants.
Jonathan holds a MA in Anthropology from Heidelberg University and an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Toronto (St George).

Jonathan was a visiting PhD student at the Center for East and South-East Asian Studies in October 2023

Joanne Kuai is a lecturer and a PhD Candidate at Karlstad University, Sweden, with a research project on Artificial Intelligence in Chinese Newsrooms. She is also a member of the Ander Center for Research on News and Opinion in the Digital Era (NODE) and an affiliated PhD student at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) at the University of Copenhagen. Her research interests centre around data and AI for media, computational journalism, and the social implications of automation and algorithms. Prior to her academic career, she had worked as a reporter, editor and news anchor in China for over a decade. Find her on LinkedIn or Twitter @JoanneKuai.

Joanne was a visiting PhD student at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies in May 2023.

Yijian (Olivia) Liu is a PhD candidate as part of the European Research Council-funded BROKEX project at the University of Oslo. She has submitted her PhD thesis and is now waiting for public defense on 16 June 2023. She holds a Master's degree in Contemporary Chinese Studies (2017-2018) from Oxford University, Foreign Service Programme (2016-2017) from Oxford University, Bachelor's degree in Peace and Conflict Studies (2013-2016) from the University of Pisa in Italy and exchange programme (2014-2015) at the University of Porto in Portugal. She has worked for the European Chambers of Commerce and EU SME Center in Beijing and been an intern at the UN Environment Finance Initiative in Geneva. Olivia studies high-tech entrepreneurship in China ethnographically.

Olivia was a visiting PhD student at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies in April-May, 2023

NGA Shi Yeu is a PhD student in Social Anthropology at Stockholm University. His project is supported by the Stockholm Center for Global Asia and the Wadsworth International Fellowship from the Wenner-Gren Foundation in New York. Originally hailing from Malaysia, he earned his first degree in biology (majoring in botany). He then re-routed into environmental anthropology for master's degrees at National Taiwan University and the University of Kent, which anchored on indigenous resistance and deforestation politics in Sarawak, Borneo. This work led him to receive two thesis awards from the Taiwan Society of Anthropology and Ethnology (2019) and the Cultural Studies Association (2021). As part of his interest in participatory approaches, he collaborated with visual artists, indigenous communities, and state-led corporations in art-based public exhibition-making in Taiwan. His current research lenses have shifted into medical anthropology and more-than-human ethnography. He focuses on the emergence of the ‘probiotic turn’ in fostering East Asian mental wellness via eating bacterial organisms claiming imaginaries of conviviality for self-nurturing the gastrointestinal lifeworld in neoliberal Taiwan.

Shi Yeu was a visiting PhD student at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies in February - March 2024.

Yanti Sastrawan is a PhD Candidate in Media & Communications in Södertörn University and part of the Graduate School: School, Sport, Screen. Her research project observes the digitalisation of education in Indonesia with the context of the national state ideology known as Pancasila and how it is being implemented in citizenship education.

Prior to her doctoral studies, she completed a Bachelor's Degree in Visual Communication Design at BINUS International University in Jakarta, Indonesia, a Master of Arts Degree in Media and Communication Studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London in the UK, and a Master of Science Degree in Digital Media and Society at Uppsala University in Sweden. To find out more, connect with her on LinkedIn, Twitter @yantiyanto, or visit her website: yantisastrawan.com

Yanti was a visiting PhD student at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies in January 2024.