Attyat Mayans

Matriculated September 2018

Research Interests

East Asia, social class, urban anthropology, schooling, mobility

About

Attyat Mayáns is a PhD student in sociocultural anthropology at Boston University. Her dissertation work engages the idealized trajectories of individuals in urban China and Mongolia towards perceived middle-class belonging. She is broadly interested in the impacts of the globalization and commercialization of schooling as educational systems expand and economies grow throughout East Asia. 

Mayáns holds a B.A. in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology and a Certificate in Child and Family Policy from Duke University, where she graduated with highest distinction. At Duke, Mayáns was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow and received a four-year full merit scholarship as one of twelve University Scholars supported by the William H. Gates Foundation. Her B.A. honors thesis, under the direction of Dr. Eileen C. Chow, traced the history of the study-abroad movement in China and its links to the creation of a “modern” educational system and sustained national development. 

Upon matriculating at BU, Mayáns received a U.S. Fulbright student research grant to conduct a one-year project at East China Normal University in Shanghai, China. Her Fulbright project engaged with the experiences of senior high school students in their plan to enter into college in China or abroad. She examined how this decision-making was navigated and supported by distinct pedagogies to which students in two separate cohorts are exposed along with the role of English in the classroom, and together how these elements shape Chinese public education in a globalized world. 

In addition to her academic work at BU, Mayáns supports various educational organizations in East Asia and the United States as an advisor and instructor. These include the Reach the World Foundation, where she has worked with classrooms in New York and Michigan, the Taiyanghua Community Center in Shanghai, China, the Zorig Foundation in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, and El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe, a nonprofit community center and museum space serving her birthplace of Northern New Mexico. Her visual field notes, photographic documentations of the urban experience during research, have been featured in the inaugural issue of Beans and Rice Magazine, a collaboration by students at the University of New Mexico and Seattle University, and can also be explored at imagenesmayans.com.

Awards & Grants

• Intensive Summer Mongolian Language Program Fellow, American Center for Mongolian Studies (June 2022-August 2022).
• New Sinology PhD Research Programme Fellow, East China Normal University (February 2022-January 2023)
• China-US Scholars Program Recipient, Institute for International Education  (January-May 2022).
• Short-Term Graduate Research Abroad Fellowship (GRAF), Boston University.  (Fall 2022).
• Department of Anthropology Summer Research Grant, Boston University. (Summer 2020).
• U.S. Fulbright Student Research Grant, Shanghai, China. (September 2018-July 2019).
• Boston University Dean’s Fellowship (Fall 2019, Spring 2020).

Publications

• forthcoming