Class of 2025
Hometown: Kentwood, Michigan
Major: History: Race and Ethnicity
Minors: Asian American & Diaspora Studies and Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies
Mellon Project: Words Carved onto Bones: Exploring the Formation of Chin Refugee Communities in Michigan
By examining the intimate transnational intersections between displacement and resettlement, this project: (a) investigates and records how Chin refugees form(ed) communities in Michigan through oral history; (b) situates the Chin people's history within Myanmar’s historical contexts "post-independence" (post-1948); (c) uses various archives to delineate the Chin people's history before and after 1948; and (d) interprets community history via frameworks of class, race, and religion. The soul of this project lies in collecting, narrating, and analyzing Asian American community history through the use of Indigenous and Critical Refugee Studies frameworks to investigate and examine the formation of Chin communities in the United States.