Kieran Oberman completed his PhD at Oxford University.  His thesis,  "Immigration and Freedom of Movement," argued that people have a human right to freedom of movement that entails a right to cross international borders. He thus concluded that immigration restrictions could not be justified outside of emergency situations.

In his post-doctoral workat Stanford, where he divides  his time between The Program on Global Justice and the Center for Ethics in Society, Kieran is continuing to focus on the ethical issues surrounding international migration.  While at Stanford he has completed an article, "Immigration, Global Poverty and the Right to Stay", that argues against using migration as a means to address the problem of global poverty.  The article is forthcoming in Political Studies.  He has also written an article that explores the question of whether the brain drain of skilled workers from poor states could justify the imposition of immigration restrictions.  He is currently working on a publication, based upon his dissertation, entitled "Immigration as a Human Right". 

In the spring Kieran will teach a class entitled Introduction to Global Justice. The course is designed to encourage students to think critically about some of the most important issues in international politics including global poverty, terrorism, war, development and climate change.

Dr. Yan Wang is a visiting scholar at Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center for 2009-2010. Her research focuses on tobacco control, primary health care system, health education and health promotion, and health insurance. She is currently also the group manager of Division of Grass-Root Health Services, Shandong Provincial Health Department, P.R.China, and is in charge of urban community health services, health education and health promotion. She has an MA in public health from Shandong Medical University and PhD in Social Medicine and Health Management from Shandong University. Dr. Yan Wang has been an adjunct professor at Weifang Medical University since 2008. She also engaged in academic association and public organizations related to health affair.

Jim Hoesterey is a cultural anthropologist whose research explores the burgeoning industry of Islamic self-help in contemporary Indonesia. He recently completed his Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he also received a M.A. in Anthropology. Hoesterey also holds an M.A. in Anthropology from the University of South Carolina and a B.A. in Psychology from Marquette University.

During two years of ethnographic fieldwork (2005-07) at the Islamic school and “Heart Management” training complex of television preacher Abdullah Gymnastiar, Hoesterey sought to understand how a new generation of popular preachers and Muslim “trainers” has garnered novel forms of psycho-religious authority within the market niche of Islamic self-help.

As a postdoctoral fellow at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Hoesterey worked on his book manuscript, "Sufis and Self-help Gurus: Religious Authority and the Cultural Politics of Morality in Indonesia."

Dr. Brian Chen is currently a visiting scholar with the Asia Health Policy Program and Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University. He was recently Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center's 2009-2010 postdoctoral fellow in Comparative Health Policy. As a visiting scholar, Dr. Chen will conduct collaborative research about health of the elderly and chronic disease in China.

As an applied economist, Chen’s research focuses on the impact of incentives in health care organizations on provider and patient behavior. For his dissertation, Chen empirically examined how vertical integration and prohibition against self-referrals affected physician prescribing behavior. His job market paper was selected for presentation at the American Law and Economics Association’s Annual Meeting, the Academy of Management, the Canadian Law and Economics Association, the Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, and the First Annual Conference on Empirical Health Law and Policy at Georgetown Law Center in 2009.  The paper was also nominated for best paper based on a dissertation at the Academy of Management.

Chen comes to the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center not only with a multidisciplinary law and economics background, but also with an international perspective from having lived and worked in Taiwan, Japan, and France. He has a particularly intimate knowledge of the Taiwanese health care system from his experience as an assistant to the hospital administrator at a medical college in Taiwan.

During his past residence as a postdoctoral fellow with the Asia Health Policy Program, Chen conducted empirical research on cost containment policies in Taiwan and Japan and how those policies impacted provider behavior. His work also contributed to the program’s research activities on comparative health systems and health service delivery in the Asia-Pacific, a theme that encompasses the historical evolution of health policies; the role of the private sector and public-private partnerships; payment incentives and their impact on patients and providers; organizational innovation, contracting, and soft budget constraints; and chronic disease management and service coordination for aging populations.

Dr. Brian Chen recently completed his Ph.D. in Business Administration in the Business and Public Policy Group at the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley. He received a Juris Doctor from Stanford Law School in 1997, and graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1992.

After two years of research at the University of Tokyo, Dr. Matt Augustine recently received his Ph.D. in History from Columbia University. Augustine also received a M.A. in History from Columbia and received a B.A. from the Politics Department at Princeton University. He specializes in the history of modern Japan and Korea.

Augustine’s research focuses on international and comparative history of military occupations, especially U.S. occupations in Japan, Korea, and Okinawa; Japan’s colonial empire in the Asia-Pacific; and the history of race, migration, and border controls.

He recently published an article that explores the interaction between the cross-border smuggling and reversion movement with Japan as acts of resistance by Okinawans against U.S. military rule in the Ryukyu Islands after World War II. Augustine’s dissertation, “Crossing from Empire to Nation: Repatriation, Illegal Immigration, and the Allied Occupation of Japan, 1945-1952,” examines the relationship between migration and border controls, as well as the redefinition of nationality and ethnicity in post-imperial Japan.

While at Shorenstein APARC, Augustine will research and write on the history of war reparations that continue to affect relations between Japan and its neighbors in Northeast Asia. He will also teach a course that covers such issues as war, empire, postcolonialism, and U.S. military occupations in the region.

Abbas Milani is the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University and a visiting professor in the department of political science. In addition, Dr. Milani is a research fellow and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution.

Prior to coming to Stanford, Milani was a professor of history and political science and chair of the department at Notre Dame de Namur University and a research fellow at the Institute of International Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. Milani was an assistant professor in the faculty of law and political science at Tehran University and a member of the board of directors of Tehran University's Center for International Studies from 1979 to 1987. He was a research fellow at the Iranian Center for Social Research from 1977 to 1978 and an assistant professor at the National University of Iran from 1975 to 1977.

Dr. Milani is the author of Eminent Persians: Men and Women Who Made Modern Iran, 1941-1979, (Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, NY, 2 volumes, November, 2008); King of Shadows: Essays on Iran's Encounter with Modernity, Persian text published in the U.S. (Ketab Corp., Spring 2005); Lost Wisdom: Rethinking Persian Modernity in Iran, (Mage 2004); The Persian Sphinx: Amir Abbas Hoveyda and the Riddle of the Iranian Revolution (Mage, 2000); Modernity and Its Foes in Iran (Gardon Press, 1998); Tales of Two Cities: A Persian Memoir (Mage 1996); On Democracy and Socialism, a collection of articles coauthored with Faramarz Tabrizi (Pars Press, 1987); and Malraux and the Tragic Vision (Agah Press, 1982). Milani has also translated numerous books and articles into Persian and English.

Milani received his BA in political science and economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1970 and his PhD in political science from the University of Hawaii in 1974.