I graduated from the University of St Andrews with an MA hon in Modern History and Russian. During my honour years, I researched the history of China and Japan, one from an intellectual perspective, and the other from a social and spatial historical perspective. Besides history, I am also particularly interested in Russian literature, especially fantastic fiction, Dostoevsky and Bulgakov.
For my undergraduate research, I focused on the history of nursing homes in pre-war Japan. By utilizing this nursing home as a case study and adopting a spatial historical perspective, I investigated the modernisation trend of Jōdo-shū Buddhism in Japan, in contrast with approaches of its rival Jōdo-Shinshū. I also furthered my research on nursing homes by writing another research essay, focusing on the connection of exhibitions held in nursing homes and department stores with the represented life of elderly people in pre-war Japan.
Columbia and LSE will allow me to continue my interest and study of transnational history in the Far Eastern area, particularly China and Japan, and potentially Russia. In this program, I plan to continuously look into the history of welfare institutions, not only limited to nursing homes, and see how western philanthropic ideologies interacted and merged with East Asian countries during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and how these hybrid ideas influenced the ideology and everyday life practices of the intelligentsia and normal citizens.
