Shuyuan He
Fall 2025 John Jay Fellow
Hometown: ?
College: Thomas More College
Degree: ?
Born in Beijing, China, Shuyuan He emigrated at a young age and has since lived in New Zealand and the United States. Shuyuan is an alumna of the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, class of 2025. There, in addition to completing a rigorous curriculum in the classical languages, philosophy, theology, and the Great Books, she was active in the Milk Street Society, Thomas More College’s chapter of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), and was a 2024 ISI honors scholar. Her love of French literature has led her to co-found and run a student French group, and for some time she was also acting secretary for the local Chesterton Society.
During the summer of 2024, Shuyuan participated in the Summer Studio in Classical Architecture hosted by the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art (ICAA) in New York City and completed the program with distinction. This experience exposed her to the feasibility of building classical in modern society, and encouraged her to pursue her architectural development by applying to M.Arch programs. She finds classical architecture a meaningful field where she will be able to build upon her liberal arts background and create spaces that foster human flourishing and promote the common good of the civitas.
Shuyuan was baptized in 2012, when she was ten years old. While an undergraduate, she became part of a colonial New England congregation, of which she is inordinately proud. She has interned at the Davenant Institute, where she had the opportunity to learn from Christians of diverse traditions. Without compromising on the essentials, she considers herself to be an ironical Melanchthonian, working for the spiritual unity of all true Christians. In her spare time Shuyuan enjoys, in permutations and combinations, reading obscure European novels and memoirs, translating poetry, drawing, and thinking about her early modern historical epic. She would have liked to be a Renaissance humanist, though she is not counting on the prospect of finding aristocratic (or republican) patronage.