What brought you to the USA?
I actually lived in Michigan with my mother ten years ago and always wanted to move back to the US one day. Last year I applied for a Fulbright grant and when I got that I applied to a number of different Chinese literature programs here. I didn’t get into my top choice program and only later realized that the program I’m at now was my top choice program all along, I just didn’t know it at the time!

In what are you currently working on?
At the moment I’m only taking classes and not working very much on my own research yet, but when I’m done with my coursework, I will be working on contemporary Chinese diaspora literature in Southeast Asia, focusing on Macau and perhaps doing some comparative work with Portuguese literature as well, we’ll see.

What conditions do you have here that you do not have in Portugal?
Chinese studies is a fairly new field in Portugal, whereas it has a long history in the US, in particular at older schools like Yale. As a literature person, I don’t need too much more beyond my books, and the library at Yale is absolutely spectacular (they even purchased a series of Chinese books for me last month!) Also, most of the richer universities here have a lot of money for advanced foreign language study which is something I hope to benefit from next summer.

What are your future plans?
Simple: to survive the PhD.

Why did you join PAPS?
A friend told me about PAPS and I thought it’d be a good way to meet interesting people here and find out what other Portuguese people are doing.