Dr. Qin’s research centers on adolescents and emerging adults from immigrant and minority families. One main question underlying her work is: How do immigration, culture, gender, SES, and important ecological contexts like family, peers, and school impact adolescent and emerging adult development?  She has worked with diverse populations including Asian immigrant parents and children, high-achieving Asian American adolescents, so-called ‘tiger mothers,’ Sudanese refugee unaccompanied minors and emerging adults, and Chinese international students. She uses mostly mixed-method research strategies and most of her published work draws on qualitative methods. Dr. Qin has co-edited multiple volumes on the post-1965 New Immigration, globalization and education, Asian American and Pacific Islander children and mental health, and, most recently, children and prejudice.

Influenced by decolonizing/humanizing/liberation research paradigms and epistemologies, Dr. Qin is shifting the focus of her work in recent years to examine culturally diverse ways of knowing, healing and wellbeing. As scholars in the field are increasingly aware of the hegemonic nature of WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) psychological research that dominates the epistemological landscape and pushes out other cultures’ ways of knowing, healing, and wellbeing globally, she is interested in exploring and understanding less well known knowledge traditions from diverse global cultures, including ancient and indigenous approaches. She is currently examining traditional Eastern cultural and spiritual traditions such as Buddhism and how “this millennia-old system” includes a complete, profound and deeply psychological theory (that gives rises to popular practices such as mindfulness and meditation) can contribute to our understanding of mental health problems and pathways toward healing. Such knowledge bases provide an important alternative to the WEIRD ego- and self-dominated model of understanding human development, providing useful concepts such as non-self and compassion. She hopes to collaborate with scholars with similar interests of indigenous ways of knowing, healing and wellbeing. 

Dr. Qin is not accepting doctoral students for this upcoming academic year.