Joshua Tan Hong Yi
Joshua Hong Yi Tan was born and raised in Singapore, before pursuing higher education in Canada and the United States. He earned his Ph.D. in History in 2024 from the University of California, Santa Cruz. His current book manuscript, tentatively titled Chinese International Students in the America’s Cold War: A Transpacific History, explores the experiences of diasporic Chinese intellectuals in Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, and the United States as they navigated shifting geopolitical and educational landscapes between Cold War Asia and Asian America. His writings have been published or are forthcoming in Situations: Cultural Studies in the Asian Context, The Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, and public-facing venues like the UC Humanities Research Institute’s foundry, Jom Media, and The Asian Review of Books.
Joshua’s broader research and teaching interests include modern Chinese history, Chinese migration and diaspora, the Cold War in Asia, and global Christianity. Now living in Singapore, he is conducting oral history and archival research for a second project on Chinese Christian and missionary networks in the South Seas (Nanyang).
EDUCATION:
- University of California, Santa Cruz (Ph.D., 2024)
- University of British Columbia (M.A., 2018)
- New York University (B.A., 2016)
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
- Chinese Migration and Diaspora
- Cold War Asia
- World Christianity
- Global Higher Education
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
- “Mediating Self and Nation: Diasporic Chinese Women in the ‘Singapore New Wave’,” Situations: Cultural Studies in the Asian Context, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2025): 69-97.
- “Whose World Is It? Global Educational Justice in an Age of Neoliberalism,” foundry (University of California Humanities Research Institute, 2025).
- Review of Hongshan Li, Fighting on the Cultural Front: U.S.-China Relations in the Cold War, PRC History Review, No. 79 (May 2025).
- “Migration, Conversion, and Transnational Activism in a Vancouver Chinese Church,” in Fenggang Yang and Chris White eds., Christian Social Activism and Rule of Law in Chinese Societies (Lehigh University Press, 2021).