The East Asian Studies Student Union has been busy over the summer! Read about our pre-semester activities.
April – August 2026
This summer, EASSU organized a orientation event in Shanghai, China!
We had a truly amazing time with Professor Victor Falkenheim and the EASSU team at the Bank of China for the University of Toronto Shanghai Orientation! It was a pleasure connecting with incoming students, sharing our experiences, and introducing them to the vibrant East Asian Studies community at U of T. We hope to see even more students become part of our growing community.
Our EASSU executives posted three vlogs about their summer. Watch them below!
Annie’s Vietnam endeavours: instagram.com/reel/DY2JPTrTYlT
Sayaka’s Japan expedition: instagram.com/reel/DaauJzzu1x7/
Luna’s China adventures: instagram.com/reel/DcRypg3OwD0/
Luna, Derek and Yuzhou, EAS undergrads (and the latter, EAS grad) presented their research at Fudan University.
Their project, Survival Infrastructure: How Couriers in Shanghai Build Stability from Precarity, looks at delivery couriers’ work and living conditions in Shanghai through interviews, surveys, and field observations. The mini-lecture gave Summer Abroad students a closer look at how student research happens on the ground. It opened up conversations about fieldwork, research design, and the challenges of learning from people‘s everyday experiences in the city.
For EASSU, this experience shows how East Asian Studies and Asian Studies more broadly can connect academic learning with real research, local encounters, and student-led conversations in Asia.
Last but not least, our team has devoted a great amount of effort on reviving our undergraduate journal, OnEast!
The EASSU team devoted much of our summers into publishing a “summer 2026” volume of OnEast. While most journals take a full academic year to complete, we aimed to do everything, from courting submissions to peer-review, between April and September. Physical copies of our journal will be made available for purchase during our general meeting in mid-September! A free digital version will also be available for viewing on the OnEast website.
All in all, we received 34 submissions from 27 different authors, from 11 different universities spanning five countries around the world. After a lengthy selections process, we ultimately chose twelve submissions for publication.
OnEast could not have been possible without the inexorable efforts of our editorial team. Serving on our editorial team are Luna Liu (President), Vittorio Wang (Editor in Chief), David Windram, Derek Wang, Sayaka Kusanagi (lead editors), Nora Kuo, Lulu Shah, Yunkai Xu, Atlas Young (associate editors), Yuzhou Hu, Qidi Lin, Sam Minden, Eilis Peyroux-Price and Ted Allen Rawling (graduate editors).
We also thank professors Thomas Kierstead, Atsuko Sakaki and Yiching Wu for their invaluable efforts in promoting and advising the editorial team.