At SCAS, Shanshan Lan will work on her monograph titled “Becoming laowai (foreigner) in China: Race, migration and the contested meanings of whiteness.” With the rise of China’s economy an increasing number of white westerners are moving to China for better job and business opportunities. From the so-called transnational elites to self-initiated entrepreneurs, from part-time English teachers to undocumented models and dancers, differences based on class, nationality, gender, and legal status among multiple groups of white-looking migrants highlight the fragmented nature of white racial identities in China. The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020 not only put a halt to the transnational mobility norms enjoyed by many Western migrants, but ignited new waves of nationalism and xenophobia among the Chinese public. How do different groups of Western migrants navigate the radically changing political, social, and legal landscapes in China? To what extent does race and racialization frame their daily interactions with various groups of Chinese? The book adds an international and comparative perspective to current scholarship on whiteness studies by identifying China as an emerging frontier zone where the western notion of whiteness is disassembled and reassembled in a new historical context of changing power relations between China and major western countries.

Shanshan Lan will be at SCAS as a Fellow during the spring of 2027.

Daniel Lee will be at SCAS in 2026–2027 as a Fellow funded by The Swedish Research Council’s Visiting Researcher grant in research into the Holocaust, victims of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism. During his time at SCAS, Lee will examine recent changes in Holocaust memory and commemoration. Such changes include the Holocaust moving out of living memory into history as fewer eyewitnesses remain alive, alongside recent advances in recording and presenting survivor testimony, as well as the development of education and memorialization in the former communist countries and in North Africa and the Middle East.

Lee will also contribute in multiple ways to students and academics interested in the Holocaust, as well as working on various cultural heritage projects in collaboration with museums and institutions across Sweden.