The East Asia Center offered graduate students awards of up to $500 for travel to attend conferences and to conduct research. Momoka Asano (Religious Studies) attended the American Academy of Religion Conference in Boston in November 2025, presented a paper on stepping on the image of Christ as a form of deconversion, venerating a Buddhist bodhisattva as a form of preserving the Christian faith. Meagan Finlay (EALCS) attended the Kyoto Cultural Museum's Annual Jidaigeki Filmmakers Lab in December 2025, serving an interpreter for their workshop's master sessions. Yuan Liang (EALCS) attended the AAS 2026 Annual Conference in March 2026 in Vancouver, Canada, presenting a paper titled, “The Temple of Cats: Negotiating Daoist Ethics, Markets, and Science in Contemporary China.” Mingyi Xiao (Comparative Literature) conducted a month-long field trip in Kenya to research Chinese-run media companies. Ruixue Zhou (History) attended a five-day workshop, the Tangut Winter School, at the Elling Eide Center in Florida in January 2026.