His current research focuses on the political culture within Europe and the US. The main emphasis is placed on the interaction between macro level characteristics and individual attitudes and behavior. Here, a core research question is whether political attitudes are influenced stronger by modernization processes or by institutional settings. Other research topics are voting behavior, social inequality, mobility, and methods of empirical research. Most of his research is done in an international comparative view. For this purpose survey data are used and related to country characteristics by multilevel analyses.

Stella Quah, (PhD, University of Singapore; M.Sc [sociology], Florida State University) is professor of sociology at the National University of Singapore. She was a Fulbright Hays scholar from 1969 to 1971. Since 1986 she has spent academic sabbaticals as research associate and visiting scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California Berkeley; the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the Department of Sociology at Harvard University; the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University; the Stanford Program in International Legal Studies, Stanford University; and the National Centre for Development Studies, Australian National University.

Professor Quah was elected vice president for research of the International Sociological Association (ISA); chairperson of the ISA Research Council for the session 1994-98; and served as associate editor of International Sociology (1998-2004).

Among her professional activities, Professor Quah serves on two institutional review boards; is member of the Society for Comparative Research; member of the International Advisory Board of the British Journal of Sociology; member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Health Sociology Review, the journal of the health section of the Australian Sociological Association; member of the editorial board of Marriage & Family Review; member of the International Advisory Board of Asian Population Studies; editor of the Sociology in Asia Series; and editor of the Health Systems Section, Encyclopedia of Public Health (Elsevier Inc).

Professor Quah's main areas of research are medical sociology, social policy, and family sociology. The complete list of her publications is at http://profile.nus.edu.sg/fass/socquahs.

Mark R. Peattie was a visiting scholar at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was a professor of history emeritus at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and was the John A. Burns Distinguished Visiting Professor of History at the University of Hawai'i in 1995.

Peattie was a specialist in modern Japanese military, naval, and imperial history. His current research focused on the historical context of Japanese-Southeast Asian relations. He was also directing a pioneering and international collaborative effort of the military history of the study of the Sino-Japanese war of 1937–45 being sponsored by the Asia Center at Harvard University.

He is editor, with Peter Duus and Ramon H. Myers, of the Japanese Wartime Empire, 1937–1945 (Princeton University Press, 1996). Peattie is the author of the Japanese Colonial Empire: The Vicissitudes of Its Fifty-Year History (Tokyo: Yomiuri Press, 1996).

He coauthored, with David Evans, Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887–1941 (Naval Institute Press, 1997), winner of a 1999 Distinguished Book Award of the Society for Military History. A sequel, Sunburst: The Rise of Japanese Naval Air Power, 1909–1941, was published by the Naval Institute Press in 2001.

Peattie is also the author of the monograph A Historian Looks at the Pacific War (Hoover Essays in Public Policy, 1995).

Peattie was a reader for Columbia University, University of California, University of Hawai'i, Stanford University, University of Michigan, and U.S. Naval Institute Presses.

Peattie frequently served as lecturer in the Stanford University Continuing Studies Program and in the Stanford Alumni Travel Program.

He was named an associate in research at the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University from 1982 to 1993.

He was a member of the U.S. Information Agency from 1955 to 1968 with service in Cambodia (1955–57), in Japan (Sendai, Tokyo, Kyoto, 1958–67), and in Washington, D.C. (1967–68).

Peattie held a PhD in Japanese history from Princeton University.

Songhua Hu is currently a PhD student in sociology at Stanford University. His research interests include social stratification, elite transition and life courses in China. Under the supervision of Professor Andrew G. Walder, he is working on his dissertation, which focuses on the impact of family background on life chances (including education, occupation and political affiliation) in urban China from 1950 to 1996. Originally from China, he attained a BA degree in sociology from Renmin University of China and an MA degree in sociology from Stanford University.

Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu received his doctorate from Harvard in psychology. He was a Fulbright scholar in Okinawa before becoming tenured professor at the University of Tokyo. At Stanford he is consulting professor in the School of Medicine and teaches in the Program in Human Biology, Anthropology, and in the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.

His books in Japanese and English include: Multicultural Encounters, Amerasian Children, and Narratives of Multicultural Counseling. His most recent book is When Half is Whole: Multiethnic Asian American Identities (2012, Stanford University Press). Another co-authored book, Synergy, Healing, and Empowerment: Insights From Cultural Diversity, will be published in 2012 (Brush Education).

George Krompacky received a BA in English literature from Rutgers University; an MA from Cornell University in East Asian studies; and an MA in East Asian languages and literatures from Yale University, where his PhD work centered on Chinese fiction and drama of the Ming dynasty. He has taught Chinese language at Yale University and Hamilton College.

Krompacky joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center in 2005 and served as program coordinator of the Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship until January 2011. Prior to coming to Stanford University he was associate director of international education and fellowships and the Light Fellowship coordinator at Yale University from 1999 to 2002.