Meet The Team

Pengfei Zhao is an assistant professor of qualitative research methodology in the College of Education at the University of Florida. Her work is grounded in rigorous and innovative methodological practice employing ethnographic, narrative, action research, and mixed methods approaches. She is also an experienced bilingual researcher using both Mandarin Chinese and English in her work, and I conduct research in the United States, China, and the cross-Pacific transnational context.

Peiwei Li is an Associate Professor of Counseling and Psychology, and the Director of the PhD program of Counseling and Psychology in Transformative Leadership, Education, and Applied Research at Lesley University. Her scholarship locates in the borderland of critical psychology and critical qualitative methodologies, pertaining to identity development, transnational experiences, emancipatory interest, consciousness-raising, recognition, sol­idarity, and potentials for liberatory actions.

Dr. Fu is Professor in the area of literacy with a specialty in writing and literacy instruction for new immigrants. She has had extensive experience of working in high poverty low performing K-12 public schools in New York City populated with new immigrant children and youths, among whom 250 languages are spoken.

Mu Zhang received a Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration from the University of Florida. Her research interests include student development, international student, and comparative higher education between China and the United States.

Yongliang is a graduate student in clinical mental health counseling at Lesley University. He received his Bachelor’s degree in psychology at the Univeristy of Massachusetts Boston. His research focus on the experiences from transnational Chinese families during COVID-19. His research interests are marginalzed groups, family relationship, identity development, traumatic experiences, and the unconscious.

Carolyn Brazil received her Bachelor’s degree in Art History and Fine Arts at Brandeis University. Carolyn is receiving her Master’s degree at Lesley University studying art therapy and counseling.  Her research focuses on the Asian American experience and examined the themes of oppression and race during the COVID-19 pandemic. Concurrently, she is a member of the “Lesley Listening Lab”, a research project examining the subjective and phenomenological experience of listening.  Currently, Her studies focus on how traumatic experiences impact an individual's relationship with sound.

Lucy Xie is a recent Master’s graduate in Women’s Studies at the University of Florida, and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from York University in Toronto. Her respective thesis topics have explored the historical and ongoing construction of the ‘model minority’ narrative in light of discriminatory experiences provoked by COVID-19, and have critiqued the psychiatric diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder through the lens of intersectionality. She hopes to combine these research interests to pursue counseling psychology, with an emphasis on the psychological impacts of race, immigration, gender, class, and sexuality on the East Asian diaspora.

Zhongyi Min is a third year Ph.D student in the English Education program at the University of Florida. Her research interests include media literacy, writing instructions, translanguaging, and bi/multilingual education.