Dr. Shyh Wei Yang

Born and raised in Taiwan, I moved to North America (Canada) at the age of 16. I began my undergraduate education as an architecture major at Washington University in St. Louis. During a field project on a Native American reservation in southern Arizona, I was intrigued by how health issues like obesity and diabetes had become the "new norms" of its residents' everyday lived experiences. This puzzle further inspired me to explore the political and economic influences on land tenure changes and health status among Navajos at University of Denver. There, I was introduced to an American anthropologist who studied Taiwan and was reconnected to the island and began building a working relationship with groups of Austronesian aborigines named Bunun. My ethnographic research lies at the nexus of identity, language, landscape, and health/well-being as experienced and my geographical interests are Austronesia, East Asia, and North America.

I have taught both lower and upper division anthropology classes at University of California, Riverside (2009; 2012-2014) and have been working as an adjunct instructor at Santiago Canyon College since Fall 2015.