About
Current research interests:
My primary research involves understanding the relationships between language, culture, and cognition and how emotional experiences are grounded in culture. My past research has included leading large, international research teams to develop standardized measures of vocabulary and grammar for Chinese children, experimental studies on language and cognition in infancy through the early school years, as well as language and reading development in Chinese- and Spanish-English bilinguals. I have also mentored emerging scholars in the development of emotion regulation and how it incorporates physiological, psychological, and cultural components. In the past 5 years, I have been involved in the development of educational animations to teach English to English-language learners through naturalistic, empirically-informed, and captivating narratives, and in the empirical evaluation of the effectiveness of this narrative-based approach for both vocabulary and grammatical development. Since the start of COVID, I have been leading an interdisciplinary research team exploring decisions involving social distancing and other factors to ameliorate the effects of COVID-19 across the globe, and collected data from over 20,000 adults across 18 countries and regions and an oversample of visible minorities in the United States.
Current projects:
I am also interested in the study of 20th century China, including its literature and arts-related history. I am currently working on a novel that traces the development and cultural influences of both Chinese and Russian-Jewish musicians, artists, and intellectuals as they navigate their way through early 20th century Shanghai, China, and the mix of ethnicities, languages, religions, and music that shape the development of their identities together with the city as it expands with refugees from other parts of China and the world. I am using archived newspapers, films, magazines, biographies, and interviews as sources to develop the novel and would welcome conversations and collaborations with students and others in this and other endeavors.
Teaching Interests:
contemporary China; culture, identity, and development
