I am a Ph.D. student at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa specializing in Chinese philosophy, ranging from the classical to the modern periods. Besides Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, Legalism and other pre-Qin (before 221 BCE) schools of thought, I am well-versed in Neo-Confucianism and Chan Buddhism, especially as they concern traditional Chinese literary and poetic criticism. My current research concerns the philosophical aesthetics of the late Qing/early Republican scholar Wang Guowei 王國維 (1877–1927) .

As a comparative philosopher, I also have extensive training in Western and contemporary philosophy, with a particular strong background in aesthetics. I am particularly well-acquainted with the aesthetic writings of Nietzsche and Dewey, and have also done a great deal of work on Aristotle, Kant, Schiller and Schopenhauer.

One topic I am especially drawn to is aesthetic education (měiyù 美育), which appears in the earliest works of philosophy, from the Analects of Confucius (Lúnyǔ 論語) to Plato's Republic, and plays a significant role in modern works, such as Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man. As for the present-day applications of this concept, I am exploring decolonial perspectives on aesthetic education, such as can be drawn from Aimé Césaire's "poetic knowledge" and Walter Mignolo's "decolonial aestheSis."