The Hamilton Lugar School welcomes new faculty

The Hamilton Lugar School is pleased to welcome four new faculty members this fall who will bring expertise in a wide range of areas, including Chinese linguistics and second language acquisition, migration law and policy in Korea, African languages and linguistics, and China’s role in global development from Africa to Asia. “We are delighted to have these accomplished scholars and teachers join our faculty,” Hamilton Lugar School Executive Associate Dean David Bosco said. “We look forward to the many ways in which they will strengthen HLS.” 

Yuan Lu

Yuan LuLu joins the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures as an assistant professor of applied linguistics. His research interests include second language acquisition theories and research methods, grammar learning and teaching in Chinese as a second language, second language assessment and testing, and technology-assisted language learning and teaching. His work has been published in journals such as The Modern Language Journal, Applied Linguistics, Second Language Research, and Language Teaching Research.

Lu taught Chinese language to second language learners in China, at the University of Kansas, and the University of Iowa before joining Indiana University. He also served as Chinese program coordinator at the University of Iowa. He earned his Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition with a specialization in Chinese Language Teaching and Learning from the University of Iowa. He holds two degrees from Central China Normal University as well – an M.A. in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, and a B.A. in Chinese Language and Literature.

Angela Yoonjeong McClean

Angela Yoonjeong McCleanMcClean joins the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures as a Korea Foundation Assistant Professor of Korean Politics and Society. She studies migration and refugee landscape in South Korea through the lens of law and society and political sociology. She is currently working on a book project that explores the dynamics and stakeholders involved in the adoption and implementation of refugee protection laws/norms in South Korea, aiming to address the puzzle of the country’s exceptionally low refugee recognition rate.

Before coming to Indiana University, McClean was a postdoctoral associate in East Asian Studies and lecturer in Sociology at Yale University, and a Korea Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan’s Nam Center for Korean Studies. She earned a Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of California San Diego, an A.M. in Regional Studies - East Asia from Harvard University, and a B.A. in East Asian Studies and American Studies from Wellesley College.

Beatrice Ng’uono Okelo

Beatrice Ng'uono OkeloOkelo joins the African Studies Program as a lecturer in Kiswahili/Swahili. Her research interests include the interface between morphology and phonology, Swahili and Dholuo language and linguistics, second and foreign language pedagogy, and the role of the World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages in the teaching and learning of Swahili.
Since 2007, Okelo has taught Swahili courses to a wide variety of learners – from elementary school through postgraduate – at various U.S. universities and for a number of language programs, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Indiana University, Baylor University, Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant program, Princeton University Swahili summer study abroad program, Yale University’s Yale African Language Initiative (YALI), and Swahili STARTALK programs at Indiana University and at the Belanno Language School in Neenah, Wisconsin.

Okelo earned a Ph.D. in Linguistics, with a concentration in African Languages and Linguistics and a minor in African Studies, from Indiana University. She holds an M.A. in African Languages and Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Bachelor of Education in Music and Kiswahili from Kenyatta University.

Hong Zhang

Hong ZhangZhang joins the Department of International Studies as an assistant professor. Her research focuses on China’s role in global development, particularly in infrastructure development and industrialization. Her fieldwork has taken her to various countries in Asia and Africa to examine China’s developmental impact. She co-edits the People’s Map of Global China and the Global China Pulse journal, initiatives that foster collective efforts to study China’s global presence.

Prior to joining Indiana University, Zhang was a China Public Policy postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government (2022-2024), a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and the Columbia-Harvard China and the World Program (2021-2022).

Zhang earned a Ph.D. in Public Policy from George Mason University, a master’s degree in Sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Renmin University of China.