David J McCaskey (dmcca005@ucr.edu) is a PhD student in the History Department at UCR. He is researching the history of fisheries, fishery science, and government in Vietnam.  His project examines the ways in which people, government, industry, and science have formed and un-formed social networks around fishing and aquaculture in postcolonial Vietnam.  David completed his BA in History at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa in 2013 and his MA at SUNY UB in 2017.  His broader academic interests include Southeast Asia, environmental history, postcolonialism, animal history, and science and technology studies, and his broader non-academic interests include aquariums, fishing, hiking, and film.
Anh Ly 2015 Anh Ly (aly012@ucr.edu) is an international graduate student from Calgary, Alberta (Canada). She is currently a Ph.D. student in Anthropology at UCR. Her research examines the politics and governance of tuberculosis control strategies in Vietnam with the aim of elucidating how infectious disease infrastructures are important sites of postcolonial governance and civic engagement. Anh completed her M.A. in Anthropology at the University of Calgary, and her thesis examined the transnational practices of second-generation Vietnamese-Canadians, particularly their experiences of travel and “return” to Vietnam on homeland trips. Her broader research interests include medical anthropology, critical global health, colonial medicine, health in transitioning states, and Southeast Asia.
Celia Tuchman-Rosta (ctuch001@ucr.edu) is Ph.D. Candidate in the department of anthropology at the University of California, Riverside. Her dissertation project, “Survival of an Art: The Revitalization on Classical Dance in Cambodia” investigates the impacts of tourism and globalization on the creative and economic development of Classical Cambodian Dance. It also explores the importance of the art form for identity re-construction and cultural reconciliation after the civil war. She has just returned from conducting 18 months of ethnographic research in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap with support from the Center for Khmer Studies and Fulbright IIE and is currently in the process of writing her dissertation.
Phuoc Duong (phuoc.duong@email.ucr.edu) is a Ph.D. candidate in cultural anthropology. He’s currently conducting fieldwork in central Viet Nam. His dissertation project asks:  what can state-sponsored education in Viet Nam reveal about the governance and social mobility of the working class in a market socialist context? It tracks the journey of completing secondary school to college entrance to investigate how youth are disciplined into socialist citizens and the strategies that working-class families employ to succeed in the educational process. This research is framed against the context of a single-party state holding on to the socialist legacy while utilizing a market economy to improve the living conditions of its people. Utilizing data from twenty-one months of fieldwork at a secondary school, Youth Union along with conversations with teachers, students and parents, Phuoc reveals that education in a socialist context, albeit proposed to be egalitarian, is a complex project of governance that disciplines different populations of youth unevenly through processes of examinations. Phuoc aims to complete his dissertation by summer 2014.
Andrea Decker (adeck003@ucr.edu) is currently a Ph.D. student in Ethnomusicology at UCR. Her research examines how social norms surrounding women’s bodies in public space in Java, Indonesia, influence how women participate in music and, by extension, how popular musics gain or lose cultural capital based on gendered associations. Andrea completed her M.A. in Ethnomusicology at the UCR, and her thesis examined how women singers of dangdut, an Indonesian popular music, use social media and technology to fulfill expectations of both sexual availability and Islamic piety. Her broader research interests include Indonesia, vocality, gender studies, folklore, Mormon studies, and performance studies. When not studying or teaching, Andrea plays tabla and piano, sings in UCR Chamber Singers, performs with the UCR gamelan, tries to stay active as an actor, and watches horror movies.
Shelley Tuazon Guyton (sguyt001@ucr.edu) is a Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology at the University of California, Riverside with affiliation in the university’s Southeast Asian Studies program. She is writing a dissertation on disaster communication infrastructures in the Philippines that investigates how members of an impoverished coastal community monitor typhoons through various media and other communications to prepare for and mitigate disaster. The project takes a special focus on family and neighborhood networks as important structures for disaster communication. Her academic interests include disaster, media, technology, infrastructure, humanitarianism, postcolonial studies, national identity, area studies in Southeast Asia, and the ethics and methodologies of anthropological research. Shelley received her B.A. in Sociocultural Anthropology with honors from UC San Diego, and her M.A. in Anthropology from UC Riverside. Outside the university, she indulges in personal joys like reading literature written by or about diasporic and multiracial experiences, going on road trips, and beach camping.
Justin Quang Nguyên Phan (jphan012@ucr.edu) is currently pursuing an M.A. in Southeast Asian Studies and a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies. Prior to his time at UC Riverside, he attended UC Davis where he completed his B.A. in Women’s and Gender Studies, Asian American Studies, and Sociology. He then completed an M.A. in Ethnic Studies at UC Riverside. His current master’s thesis examines questions of empire, intimacy, and temporality in U.S. and Vietnamese diasporic cultural productions with a specific interest in how they remember the First and Second Indochina Wars. His broader research is located at the intersection of feminist theories and epistemologies, decolonization and postcolonial critique, critical race and ethnic studies, queer of color critique, critical fashion studies, performance studies, and visual cultural studies.
Joshua Lieto (jliet001@ucr.edu) is a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at UC Riverside. Through his research on the Batak languages of Sumatra, Indonesia, Joshua challenges conventional perspectives of “language death” by illuminating the entanglements of material culture, language, and meaning. In the process, Joshua hopes to use technologies such as textual digitization and 3D printing to inspire others to tell their own stories.