En-Ya Tsai joined the Kellogg Institute in 2024. Her scholarly pursuits encompass the sociology of religion, the diasporic Chinese Evangelical movement, and the transnational development in the Global South. She aspires to delve into an investigation concerning the transnational Evangelical movement initiated by Chinese Christians, and the religious and economic impacts on the marginal areas.
Her current research project disentangles how the transnational Evangelical movement strategizes to build a network that economically and ideologically affects the Global South, negotiating local community empowerment with transnational religious ideologies in Taiwan and Thailand. The research will focus on the case study of a Chinese-initiated Evangelical network, the BOL Global Apostolic Network (BGAN), which has built six hundred churches in Taiwan, the U.S., Asia, and Africa. Through conducting interviews and participant observations in BGAN churches in Taiwan and Thailand, she will explore the network-building strategies, the motivations for pursuing the Evangelical movement, and local responses to the transnational religious power. The research sheds light on decentered transnational Evangelical studies, diasporic Chinese movements, and the interplay between transnational religious forces and local community development in a non-Western setting. The project will contribute to how transnational religious power leads to social changes and community developments in civil societies of marginal places.
En-Ya obtained her bachelor’s degree from the Department of Humanities and Social Science at National Tsing-Hua University, subsequently attaining a master's degree from the Department of Sociology at National Taiwan University. Her master’s thesis focuses on the congregational-mobilizing mechanisms of a megachurch in Taiwan through ethnographic works.