Research interests include scholarship of teaching and learning, gender psychology, cultural psychology, personality psychology, and community psychology.
Just Desserts Award for Outstanding Contributions and Service to UBC Students (2016)
Killam Teaching Prize for Excellence in Teaching (2014)
Robert E. Knox Master Teaching Award (2008, 2012)
Associate Dean, Academic
Faculty of Arts
Associate Professor of Teaching
Department of Asian Studies
Email: stefania.burk@ubc.ca
Research Interests
Japanese poetry; medieval culture; and women’s writing. Current projects deal with 14th– century poetry and related aspects of cultural production, poetry as autobiography, and canon formation. Other research interests include modern adaptations and appropriations of the pre-modern canon and medieval salon culture and the involvement of women poets.
Educational Background
M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Japanese Literature, University of California, Berkeley.
Assistant Professor of Teaching
Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice
Email: alifa.bandali@ubc.ca
Alifa Bandali is a lecturer in the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice (GRSJ). Dr. Bandali’s research focuses on feminist activism both in institutional and creative spaces. Her PhD thesis titled: Paid to care: Women’s experiences in non-profit/NGO work in Malaysia examined how women working in the non-profit/NGO sector saw themselves in their work and the meaningfulness of ‘good work’.
Assistant Professor
Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice
Email: catungal@mail.ubc.ca
Dr. John Paul (JP) Catungal is an interdisciplinary scholar trained in the nexus of critical human geography and intersectional feminist theorizing. His research interests concern Filipinx and Asian Canadian studies; feminist and queer of colour critique; migrant, anti-racist and queer community organizing; and the politics of education, mentorship, teaching and learning. JP is currently Assistant Professor in Critical Racial and Ethnic Studies with UBC’s Social Justice Institute, where he was previously Instructor I (from January 2016 to June 2018) and Postdoctoral Fellow (from 2014-2015). He is founding Academic Co-Lead of the Centre for Asian Canadian Research and Engagement and served as Director pro tem of the Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies program.
JP was co-editor of the landmark 2012 volume Filipinos in Canada: Disturbing Invisibility (University of Toronto Press), as well as of recent journal special issues on the intersections of sexuality, race and nation in the Canadian context in ACME: International Journal of Critical Geographies and TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies. He has been co-editor of ACME: International Journal of Critical Geographies since August 2017. Since coming to UBC, JP has also been active in media-based public pedagogy through expert interviews and writing on local and national issues concerning sexuality, LGBTQ issues, immigration and racism. He also holds faculty affiliations with Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies and the Department of Geography.
Director and Associate Professor
Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice
Associate Professor
School of Community and Regional Planning
Email: nora.angeles@ubc.ca
Dr. Leonora (Nora) C. Angeles is Associate Professor at the School of Community and Regional Planning and the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia. She is also faculty research associate at the UBC Centre for Human Settlements where she has been involved in a number of applied research and capacity-building research projects in Brazil, Vietnam and Southeast Asian countries. Her continuing research and interests are on community and international development studies and social policy, participatory planning and governance, participatory action research, and the politics of transnational feminist networks, women’s movements and agrarian issues, particularly in the Southeast Asian region.
ACAM Program Manager
Office: Room 300, Wesbrook Building (6174 University Boulevard)
Email: acam.program@ubc.ca
Szu Shen 沈思 (she/her) is a queer Han Chinese and Taiwanese settler living and working on the unceded and occupied territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations. She is the Program Manager for the Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies program at the University of British Columbia, and works as a freelance translator and illustrator in her spare time. She has done translation work for films such as All Our Father’s Relations (2016), book projects including Journeys of Hope: Challenging Discrimination and Building on Vancouver Chinatown’s Legacies (2018), and Rooted: Chinese Canadian Stories in Burnaby (2023), as well as exhibits at Museum of Vancouver, Burnaby Village Museum, Chinese Canadian Museum, and Cumberland Museum.
Alger Ji-Liang 梁家傑 (he/him) is a UBC visual arts and ACAM graduate, and an emerging interdisciplinary artist based in Vancouver, BC on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam peoples. Alger situates the body as the centre of research and uses a lens-based practice to speak on identity, grief, memory, and space. He is currently exploring film, movement-based photography, and video art.
I was drawn to the ACAM program because of the courses offered to students. There were courses that intrigued me that I wanted to learn more about and understand. Courses like “Sociology of Migration”, “Health of Asian Diaspora in Canada”, and “Asian-Canadian Community Based Media”. It was also a very accessible minor program that didn’t require a rigorous course load which made it manageable to complete in addition to my major program (visual arts).
The ACAM program has shown me the impact a community can have on people and how shared experiences can bridge connection and foster belonging. Although my experience with ACAM was entirely virtual due to the pandemic, I felt connected to my peers and my profs because of the material we were learning. Topics like (im)migration, identity, and culture felt less like academic curricula, and more like an introspection into experiences that we’ve lived. The ACAM program allowed me to feel seen and heard, and offered me another lens to reflect on what Asian-Canadian identity is and what being Asian-Canadian means.
So many fun projects! I created a photo series titled 兔兒神回來 “Return of the Rabbit God” that was published in Tributaries Vol.3, ACAM’s student journal. I also worked a summer internship with The Suzhou Women’s Alley Mural where I created a mini-documentary on cultural activism of the diaspora in Chinatown. For my ACAM 350 Asian-Canadian Community-Based Media class, I made a mini-documentary on experiences of queer Asian-Canadians titled Voices of Queer Asian Canadians. You can also read about that project here.
Everything is temporary. Lean into your friends and into your communities. Be gentle with yourself.
I am looking forward to pursuing more community-based art projects that tell the stories of Asian-Canadians, whether that be in film, photography, visual art, or writing. I am also looking forward to experiencing all that life has to offer.
Jacqueline Sarvini (she/her) is a multiracial second-generation settler on the traditional lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil Waututh Nations. During her time at UBC, she was largely involved in community involvement and student orientation-based initiatives, both of which went hand-in-hand with her background in international development, migratory movements, and design-based learning. Nowadays, you’ll find her managing projects, sewing leftover fabric, and climbing jagged walls.
Kailey Tam is a Han Chinese settler born and raised on the unceded and ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations. They are graduating with a BA in Honours English Literature and Language with a minor in Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies. During their time at UBC, they’ve worked as a Communications Coordinator for ACAM; been a part of ACAM Tributaries team of editors; and completed an honours thesis about the biopolitical perception of (un)impressibility in Asian bodies and how that determines their positionality on a racial hierarchy that justifies the exploitation of their labour.
In full transparency, I was looking for electives, and ACAM happened to be at the top of the list on SSC due to alphabetical order. I clicked into it and went into a deep dive into ACAM’s website. I think it was one of the first times where I saw myself reflected directly in school content—people with similar stories of migration, people that looked like me, people that were voicing and exploring the things that I wanted to voice and explore. I love that ACAM is interdisciplinary—that I can bring my full self and experiences and background into the program and have that be considered valuable and integral to learning. I took my first ACAM course (ASIA 389 with Dr. Sunera Thobani), joined ACAM’s Tributaries team, and that was that.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget that first day of class in ASIA 389 with Dr. Thobani. The class was titled “Life Writings of South Asian Diasporic Women,” and before we began our deep dive into these personal and vulnerable stories, Dr. Thobani asked us why we should even bother studying and learning about these life writings. Our class came up with great answers—knowledge is valuable; closing a gap in history; creating spaces of acceptance and belonging; fulfilling missing narratives. Of course, all these answers aren’t wrong, but Dr. Thobani just said simply, “Because they are there.”
And I think that’s one of the guiding principles of ACAM that really impacted me: these stories and experiences that we try our best to voice and retell are valuable because they are there, simply by virtue of their existence. I’m learning that my own experiences are valuable—not necessarily because they’re life-changing or revolutionary—but because they exist.
Azumi Hirayama is an international student from Tokyo, Japan, graduating with a Sociology major and an ACAM minor. During her undergraduate degree, she became fascinated by how people form communities and establish support networks, especially through her experience volunteering for a Family Program at the YWCA Crabtree Corner in Vancouver Downtown Eastside. In her ACAM journey, she especially found it interesting to explore how Asians, especially the Japanese diaspora, faced racism while also engaging in settler colonialism. She is very grateful for all the support she received throughout her undergraduate degree, and while she is going back to Japan after graduation, she hopes to apply all her knowledge and skills acquired in the degree to support others in her communities.
I was drawn to ACAM since I took ACAM 300 as my elective (at the time). Dr. Laura Ishiguro’s lectures and discussions about Asian Canadians’ history were fascinating – but also I felt excited being in an ACAM class, as I often felt like experiences of Asian people in North America were often excluded from narratives in other classes. Although my experience may be different from many students who grew up in Canada, I still felt connected to the rest of the community as well.
I loved when we all shared good Asian food restaurants in ACAM 320B—and also when Dr. Ben Cheung broadcasted food videos from Asia. I feel food is a big part of identity and that instantly connected a lot of us.
One advice is to start taking ACAM courses earlier! I feel I definitely missed many opportunities for not noticing that ACAM even existed. But also, I want to tell myself not to study too much too, life gives you many lessons and experiences, not just classes and textbooks.
Faculty of Art