Ruoyu Li joined Colgate University as an assistant professor in peace and conflict studies this year. Li was born and raised in Beijing, China. During her generation, in much of Chinese society, the economy and its political sphere was changing.
“A lot of things were moving so fast,” Li said. “[My] embodied experience of how fast society can change really had an impact on me, in retrospect.”
Li also belonged to the first wave of Chinese students at this time that sought a liberal arts education abroad.
“My family has always been very, very supportive of me going abroad and studying and getting a Ph.D. My grandfather was so happy to know I started a Ph.D, as if it was the best thing in the world. So I grew up in a very interesting time with a very supportive family,” Li said.
Li arrived in the United States in 2015 to attend university. When asked why she decided to study abroad specifically in the U.S., she explained how the Harvard University library was what initially piqued her interest.
“I was reading this magazine, and there was this short passage about how beautiful the Harvard library is,” Li said, laughing. “I was in high school, and I decided I needed to visit Harvard library.”
Li’s first impression of Colgate was of its beautiful campus and of Case-Geyer library, where she did most of her research. As her first semester progressed, she began to dive deeper into Colgate’s lively, intellectual community. The campus now represents something beyond just a pretty aesthetic for her.
“You not only see a lot of events and activities happening … but also outside of the classroom; students are very passionate about their projects,” Li said. “They approach professors pretty frequently and engage in conversation with each other. I really find that very vibrant and interesting.”
On the professional side, Li has also enjoyed a warm welcome from fellow faculty.
“Another thing I really appreciate about Colgate is how supportive everyone has been, including my colleagues in peace and conflict studies, but also outside of peace and conflict studies,” Li said. “From history upstairs [and] sociology and anthropology: just everyone.”
Li cultivates this sense of community in her own courses. Every semester, students file into their lecture halls armed with notebooks and cynicism. Li attempts to bring light back into the classroom, offering clever quips and pertinent questions to keep the students engaged. For her first fall at Colgate, Li is teaching PCON 245 Organizing War and two sessions of PCON 201 Process of Peace & Conflict.
“I was stressing about [Organizing War] to be honest, but the class is just amazing,” Li remarked. “I really feel carried and supported by [the students’] brilliance … in [Process of Peace & Conflict] I didn’t experiment that much, because there are more students and it’s an intro class, but in [Organizing War], I experimented with different ways of teaching materials.”
Next semester, she will co-teach Process of Peace & Conflict with Jacob Mundy, an associate professor and director of peace and conflict studies. She will also teach a new course she proposed: Nuclear Weapons Beyond the Blast.
“We’ll be understanding the history and the impact of the entire production cycle of the nuclear bomb … because it’s so intertwined with colonialism,” Li said. “When we think of nuclear weapons, we think of the U.S., Russia [and] China, but actually, they [relied upon] on imperial power relations to produce these bombs … once we have that awareness on how central colonialism was [in producing them], a lot of the concepts we use to interpret or understand or talk about nuclear weapons will change.”
This 300-level PCON elective will build on her doctoral dissertation, which focused on nuclear testing in the Pacific. She became interested in the age of nuclear testing due to its underrepresentation in the field of political science. However, it took her entire undergraduate career to build this interest. At first, she had leaned towards art history. At Vassar College, her undergraduate alma mater, her interest shifted towards political science and Asian studies.
“I got into political science mostly because the professors at the Vassar political science department were the best,” Li said. “You know, because I learned something, the world looks so different. That feeling is quite addictive. [There is] a moment when you learn and realize something that gives you so much joy.”
For graduate school, Li attended Johns Hopkins University’s Baltimore campus. There, she initially studied racial politics, focusing on Chinese and African relations, but hit a roadblock during the pandemic. She lacked the opportunity to do much fieldwork, and most existing literature was on political economy and trade, which she wasn’t very interested in.
“I was a teaching assistant for this course on global security politics. Most of the course was about nuclear weapons. I just realized that nuclear weapons are so important. I used to think of them as Cold War bygones. I thought of it as already gone. So what happened? What are the layers of invisibilization that happened that I embodied? That got me into the topic of nuclear testing,” Li explained.
Thus, she found her focus. She completed her Ph.D. last May while serving as the Henry A. Kissinger Predoctoral Fellow at Yale University’s Jackson School of Global Affairs.
“[The Jackson School] is a very interesting and critical hub of scholars, predominantly historians … I was there in New Haven finishing up my dissertation and exploiting Yale’s resources,” Li said.
As Li finds her place at Colgate, she continues to invite curiosity and care both into her research and the classroom. Her office in Alumni 223 is always open for visitors.
