"Dr Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye's research shows how members of religious communities aren't passive consumers of beliefs, but use their agency to shape religious practice," according to an article posted on the University of Auckland website this week.
The article continues: "I'm a historian partially because when you think about all of humanity, who we are now is a very narrow slice of who we've ever been. Most of us have died, and so looking at history is a way of understanding people.
"I grew up in California; my mother is third-generation Chinese-American, and my father is third-generation Japanese-American. I learned Chinese from scratch as an undergraduate, trying to recover my identity. But I was also running cross-country, so I was asleep for most of my initial Chinese classes. I went to Beijing after my second year at uni and really warmed up to the Chinese language. And the popsicles and dumplings were so cheap, I had to go back."
Read the entire article at the University of Auckland website.