Simon Fraser University
Engaging the World

Institute For Transpacific Cultural Research

Institute For Transpacific Cultural Research / Visiting Scholars

Visiting Scholars

March - April, 2026

Gaik Cheng KHOO is Professor in the Department of Film and Theatre and Deputy Dean (Research and Sustainability) at Sunway University, Malaysia. She has helped build Malaysian cinema studies and widen the scope of Malaysian cultural studies through her eclectic interests and publications on independent filmmaking in Southeast Asia, food, race and multicultural politics, popular democracy and civil society (Bersih), Korean migrants in Malaysia and currently, the durian. Previously, she was Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham Malaysia, and Director of the University of Nottingham Asia Research Institute, Malaysia (UoNARI-M). From 2006-2012, she taught at the Australian National University. Being a postdoctoral fellow at the Asia Research Institute-National University of Singapore (2003-2005) sealed her fate as a cultural studies scholar.

August 2019 – January 2020

Guy Beauregard is a Professor at National Taiwan University and an Associate Member of SFU’s Institute for Transpacific Cultural Research. After receiving his PhD from the University of Alberta, he has been affiliated with UC Berkeley, UBC, National Tsing Hua University, the University of Toronto, and Academia Sinica. His articles have appeared or are forthcoming in Amerasia Journal, Canadian Literature, Concentric, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, International Journal of Canadian Studies, Studies in Canadian Literature, Tamkang Review, and West Coast Line. He is also the co-editor (with Cathy J. Schlund-Vials and Hsiu-chuan Lee) of The Subject(s) of Human Rights: Crises, Violations, and Asian/American Critique.  During his time at SFU, he is thinking and writing about Indigenous articulations in the Pacific, the transpacific dimensions of remembering White Terror, and transitional justice initiatives in Taiwan. Contact: guy@ntu.edu.tw

 

Sep 2019 - April, 2020

Michelle O’Brien is Assistant Professor in the English Department at Central Washington University, where they are also affiliated with the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program and Africana and Black Studies Minor. Their teaching and research focuses on Asian North American and Asian diasporic literatures and theory, multiculturalism, comparative raciality, and transpacific studies.  They are currently completing a manuscript  that examines the connections between multicultural/multiracial formations in Canada, Singapore, and Malaysia; this project focuses on how social organization across these subsites of Empire was transformed by the same racial logic that circulated throughout the colonial world and is reiterated in their multicultural structures. Their work has been published or is forthcoming in Postcolonial Text, Asiatic, and The Comparatist.



About Visiting Scholars at ITCR

Visiting Scholar is a non-stipendiary position for persons with significant academic, literary, or artistic qualifications whose work may benefit from a residency at the Institute for Transpacific Cultural Research.The position provides SFU affiliation, use of SFU library resources, internet access, and shared office space in an affiliated academic unit.

Visiting scholars are expected to be in residence for at least one semester and no longer than one year.  They will enhance the Institute’s research environment by participating in the SFU academic community and, where relevant, in wider community activities by attending lectures, workshops, and colloquia as well as making at least one public presentation in relation to original research.

Currently, ITCR can only host visiting scholars who are nominated by a member of the Institute and approved by the steering committee. When nominating a scholar, please email the following information to the Insitute Director:

  1. The scholar’s name, institutional affiliation, contact information and CV;
  2. A short description of how the scholar’s research interests and expertise are relevant to the ITCR’s mission;
  3. A proposal for at least one public presentation during the term of his or her residency at the ITCR;
  4. A proposed list of activities the scholar will engage in during his or her term of residency.

Please note that the nominating member will be responsible for overseeing the activities of the visiting scholar, introducing him or her to Institute members, organizing and promoting the public presentation, providing access to a shared office space in a relevant academic unit, and, if necessary, obtaining funding for the activities listed above.

Visiting scholars from outside Canada will be expected to arrange their own travel and immigration documents.