FLAS Fellowships

FLAS Fellows 2023-24

Beia Giebel (She/Her, Japanese)

Beia is a recent undergraduate transfer student to the University of Washington studying Mandarin Chinese, Korean, and, primarily, Japanese. She is honored to receive the FLAS Fellowship to support her 4th year Japanese studies this year. Currently majoring in Asian Languages and Cultures, Beia is interested in studying both historical and present linguistic applications of Japanese within the East Asian region and diasporas. She is particularly interested in investigating the history of the Japanese empire and resulting language hegemony and influence in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Additionally, she has an academic interest in applied Japanese linguistics and second and foreign language pedagogy. Professionally, Beia intends to enter the fields of translation, interpretation, and/or teaching after graduation.

 

Elena Hubbell (She/Her, Chinese)

Elena Hubbell is a 2L at the University of Washington School of Law. She majored in Asian Studies and Comparative Literature during her undergraduate years, where she was able to study abroad at Beijing Foreign Studies University for a full academic year, and is happy to continue studying Chinese into law school. Elena is interested in studying Chinese law, especially related to trade, compliance, and development. In the future she hopes to work for a law firm focused on international trade and sustainable development.

 

Christopher Long (He/Him/They/Them, Chinese)

Chris is a 2nd year Master’s of Social Work student and is concentrating in Clinical Social Work. Chris is interested in working with immigrant communities and hopes to leverage his Chinese language skills and broader understanding of East Asian culture to provide culturally appropriate care.

The FLAS Fellowship from the East Asia Center has enabled Chris to continue their Mandarin studies and improve their language skills to an advanced level. Chris is keen on studying differences between the societal structures and systems of the US and China that influence community health. Chris hopes to work abroad in China post-graduation to further their language acquisition and cultural development. Through his language knowledge and cultural understanding, Chris hopes to contribute back to broader community healing in Seattle.

 

Rowan Newell (He/Him, Korean)

Rowan is a second year undergraduate student majoring in Mechanical Engineering and minoring in Korean. He is honored to have been selected for the Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship for the 2023-2024 academic year.

With the FLAS fellowship, Rowan is able to spend his sophomore year focusing on Korean area and language studies alongside his engineering curriculum. In terms of engineering, Rowan is primarily interested in robotics, particularly their applications in oceanographic research, manufacturing, and more. He enjoys spending his free time working with Student Organizations such as the Underwater Remotely Operated Vehicles (UWROV) Club to help design and compete in robotics competitions. Considering South Korea’s unparalleled use of robotics, Rowan hopes to use his Korean education to widen the scope of his engineering career and have the opportunity to explore robotics abroad.

 

Brian Park (He/Him, Japanese)

Brian Park is a second-year PhD student in the History Department studying Korean and Japanese history. After having recently completed the summer program at Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies (IUC) in Yokohama, Japan through the largess of the Summer 2023 FLAS Fellowship from the East Asia Center, Brian is now studying 5th year Japanese this academic year. With advanced language training, Brian hopes to dive deeper into Japanese-language sources on Korean businesses in postwar Japan and investigate their connections to South Korea’s economic development in the 1960s and 1970s.

 

Doyeon Park (She/Her, Chinese)

Doyeon Park is a first-year MPH Epidemiology student in the School of Public Health.
She received her MS in Disease Ecology from Auburn University and studied the effect of parasitic infection and aging on mosquito vectors. In the wake of COVID-19, her interest shifted from understanding vector-borne disease transmission dynamics to building reliable models to estimate and monitor a spread of respiratory and vector-borne diseases. Her research interests are infectious diseases surveillance and emergency response preparedness in East Asia. The FLAS fellowship from the East Asia Center has allowed her to expand her knowledge of East Asia. As she is already fluent in Korean and Japanese, she is grateful for the opportunity to also study Chinese and broaden her understanding of East Asia.

 

Grace Rothmeyer (She/Her, Chinese)

Grace is third-year double majoring in Chinese and Informatics. She is also a member of the Chinese Language Flagship program at UW. The FLAS fellowship has allowed Grace to continue advancing her Chinese language skills so she can have an immersive study-abroad experience in Taiwan and ultimately work to aid China-US relations. Grace is interested in navigating the China-US relationship through the lens of human-technology interaction and effective information dispersion management. After graduation, Grace hopes to work in Taiwan and use her Chinese to ease communication barriers and strengthen collaboration on environmental issues.

 

Jamie Sullivan (He/Him, Japanese)

Jamie is entering his second year of a Master’s Program in Japan Studies. He is taking Third-year Japanese, as the next step in his lifelong quest to learn the language.

Jamie’s academic interests lie in modern and contemporary Japanese art, especially as visual culture pertains to the creation and codification of national identity. He is currently interested in a series of woodblock prints released in December of 1945, three months after Japan’s surrender. The series is titled “Scenes of Lost Tokyo,” and contains re-prints depicting an earlier, more prosperous, and imperial era of Japanese history. Alongside new prints of Meiji structures destroyed during the war, Jamie believes the re-prints are recontextualized as visual representations of anxiety over the yet-undecided fate of the Japanese emperor, a crucial aspect of Japanese national identity. Jamie hopes to eventually pursue a PhD in Art History to better aid the development of English-language scholarship in this critical period of Japanese cultural development.

 

Hannah Wampler (She/Her, Korean)

Hannah Wampler is a second-year Korean Studies M.A. student with the Jackson School of International Studies. Her current research interests are the portrayal of mother-daughter relationships in Korean literature and television dramas, and how such portrayals are indicative of larger social and gender issues in South Korea that are affecting the relationships of real-life Korean mothers and daughters.

The FLAS Fellowship has allowed Hannah to achieve third-year level proficiency in Korean during her first year of her M.A. program, and by receiving the FLAS a second time, can now continue to improve her Korean language skills to an advanced level by taking fourth-year Korean during the second year of her program. Her confidence in her Korean language skills has significantly increased over the past year, and she hopes the language training she acquired through the FLAS will allow her to contribute to translation projects in the future.