Columbia University

Field Journal, Week 1

Moving back in, meeting new people, and beginning research!
Celine Chien May 28, 2026
  1. What are you most excited about as you start your Laidlaw research summer?As I begin my Laidlaw research this summer, I'm incredibly excited to engage with all the resources both the Columbia library and New York has to offer. After interacting with Columbia's librarians in our first meeting, and now beginning to dive deeper into Columbia's library archives and other sourcing networks, I'm blown away by the number of articles, books, and artifacts–across so many time periods and languages–that we have access to. I can't wait to get my hands on some and begin reading. 

  2. This week, the discussions we held about research cut across the disciplines. How does the interdisciplinary nature of this program, the fact that students are focusing on such a diverse range of projects, help you think about your project and/or your academic interests more broadly?

    Meeting students studying and researching across vast disciplines–and even librarians who specialize in seemingly polar fields, like history and bioethics–made me realize how interconnected so many of our interests are. Coming into this research project, I knew that my research project would involve a multitude of subjects, like literature, language, environmental policy, political science, and history. As I've begun to interact with other Laidlaw scholars, I've also begun to learn and realize that everyone's projects are interdisciplinary in some way. In that sense, I feel like it's almost crucial to be able to reframe our understanding of approaching research, and that we need to use interdisciplinary approaches to better understand the complex topics presented in the world we live in today.

  3. As you begin your individual research projects this week, do you anticipate any challenges in getting started? If so, what are they?

    One of my main challenges that I see is being able to narrow down my focus and finding sufficient primary sourcing and literary reports on my topic. While there has been abundant analyses and retellings of the history of Japanese colonization in Taiwan, it's hard to find firsthand accounts of it, often from the perspectives of native people in the area.