Hyunhee Park received her BA in Asian and Western history at Seoul National University in South Korea. Even as an undergraduate she was interested in East-West relations, so she decided to go to the Middle East to learn about them. On a fellowship from the government of Israel, she studied in the department of East Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where she received her MA. She came to the United States in 2001 to do her PhD in the department of history at Yale University. She is currently working on a book manuscript entitled “The Delineation of a Coastline: The Growth of Mutual Geographic Knowledge in China and the Islamic World from 750 to 1500.” By examining the long period of contact and exchange between arguably the two most advanced societies in the world at the time, this study aims to challenge Eurocentric approaches to world history. At John Jay College, she hopes to bring into the classroom her interest in viewing Chinese and Asian history from global perspectives and her own experience of contact among the different societies and cultures of the world.