In 2021, Andrea Gevurtz Arai, Acting Assistant Professor, Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, and Jeff Hou, Professor, College of Built Environments, were awarded a Research Award through the Global Innovation Fund by the Office of Global Affairs. The Global Innovation Fund supports transformative cross-college, cross-continent global research, teaching, and learning experiences at the University of Washington.
With additional funding support from the East Asia Center, UW Japan Studies Program, Department of Landscape Architecture, UW College of Built Environments, UW China Studies Program, UW Center for Korea Studies, UW Taiwan Studies Program, and UW Center for Global Studies, Andrea Gevurtz Arai and Jeff Hou hosted a virtual conference in 2022 to bring together a cross-regional, interdisciplinary group of scholars, scholar activists, and artists from across East Asia focused on different forms of “creative resistance” to the last two decades of social disconnection, wealth inequality and new burdens placed on reproductive labor and the environment. This project was the first of its kind at the UW, a collaboration between a cultural anthropologist of Japan (and East Asia) and a Taiwanese landscape architect, and gathered an interdisciplinary group of scholars, scholar activists, and individuals involved in different forms of social change.