Graduate Students

Aaron Throness

aaronthroness@g.harvard.edu

Ph.D. Candidate in Chinese History

Aaron Throness is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations specializing in the political history of Ming China. Aaron received his BA in Asian Area Studies (2020) and MA in History (2022) from the University of British...

Shota Uchiyama

shotauchiyama@g.harvard.edu

Ph.D. Candidate in Japanese Film and Media Studies

Shota Uchiyama’s research centers on the history of female film audiences in Japan. He explores how cinema, as one of the most influential media of the twentieth century, shaped new experiences for women. His work goes beyond analyzing the dyadic...

Emily Wan

emilywan@g.harvard.edu

Ph.D. Student in Japanese Literature

Emily Wan received her B.A. in East Asian Studies from Stanford University and spent one year as a Fulbright Fellow at Waseda University. Her research focuses on renga (Japanese medieval linked verse), a collaboratively, spontaneously, and orally composed...

Annie Zhanling Wang

zhanlingwang@g.harvard.edu

Ph.D. Candidate in HEAL/China

Annie Zhanling Wang is a social historian of late imperial China and Inner Asia, with a focus on gender, family relations, voice, and empire. She has written about friendships between Manchu women in Beijing and Han women in Jiangnan in the eighteenth...

Noah Weber

Ph.D. Candidate in Chinese Literature

Noah Weber studies Chinese aesthetic thought on language, writing, and script and articulates its relevance to modern and contemporary Sinophone literature. He is also interested in writing technology, print history, and calligraphy. Noah holds an M.A. in...

Rebecca Wu

rwu@g.harvard.edu

Ph.D. Candidate in Chinese History

Rebecca Wu joined Harvard’s Ph.D. program in History and East Asian Languages in Fall 2025. She graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with an A.B. in History (2025). Her senior thesis, which examined petitioning practices in late-Ming China...

Wenxin Xiao

wenxin_xiao@g.harvard.edu

Ph.D. Candidate in Chinese History

Wenxin Xiao's research focuses on the social and cultural history of late imperial China. She received a bachelor's degree in History and Data Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an M.A. in RSEA from Harvard. Her previous work includes a...

Yu Xie

yu_xie@g.harvard.edu

Ph.D. Candidate in HEAL/Korea

Yu Xie studies the legal history of pre-modern Korea. She received her B.A. in Korean Language and Literature from Peking University and her M.A. in Korean History from Seoul National University. Her master’s thesis focused on death penalty cases...

Huirong Ye

huirongye@fas.harvard.edu

Ph.D. Candidate in Chinese Film and Media Studies

Huirong Ye is a doctoral student in East Asian Film and Media Studies at Harvard University. Her current research examines the archivalization and institutionalization of meteorology in modern China, focusing on how it became configured as a mediated...

Yi Zhang

yizhang@g.harvard.edu

Ph.D. Candidate in East Asian Arts/Film/Cultural Studies

Yi Zhang holds a B.A. in Philosophy and an M.A. in Aesthetics from Peking University. She received her second M.A. from Regional Studies—East Asia at Harvard University. Grounded in the context of late imperial China, she intends to explore the...

Jessie Zhang

jessie_zhang@g.harvard.edu

Ph.D. Candidate in Chinese Literature

Jessie Zhang is a PhD student in EALC, working on medieval Chinese literature and culture. Before coming to Harvard, she received her LLB in Law from the London School of Economics and her MA in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University...

Kent (Bowen) Zheng

kentzheng@g.harvard.edu

Ph.D. Candidate in Chinese History

Kent (Bowen) Zheng is interested in historiography, state formation, and rhetorics of legitimacy in medieval China. He received his B.A. from Bard College in 2022, where he joint-majored in Historical Studies and Classical Studies. Working on his senior...