2020 Grant Awardees

Christiane Assefa

Christiane Assefa is a PhD student in the Ethnic Studies department at UC San Diego. Her project is informed by her grassroots organizing work, experience as a child of refugees, and commitment to the stories the women in her community share. Christiane’s research interests engage the topics of oral history, feminist epistemologies, the archive, East Africa, and displacement. 

PROJECT

Grounding Buna: Locating East African Refugee Women’s Knowledge Production through Oral History and the Archive 

This dissertation project explores the root causes of the displacement of Ethiopian and Eritrean refugees as it is recorded in national archives and narrativized orally during the everyday, cultural practice of sharing coffee (buna). Through engagement with local East African refugee communities in San Diego, this particular research effort involves oral histories with refugee women that explores questions on war, militarization, gender, and displacement.

Ahmed Correa-Alvarez

Ahmed Correa was born and raised in Havana, Cuba. He is currently a Ph.D. student in Interdisciplinary Humanities at University of California, Merced. He graduated from the School of Law at the University of Havana and received a master’s degree in Sociology from FLACSO-Ecuador.

His research interests include migrant and refugee studies, border (re)configuration, imperialism, critical race and ethnicity, with focus on the Global South, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

PROJECT

Border Memories: Stories of Resistance and Resilience of Marielitos

Between April 15 and October 31, 1980, about 125,000 Cubans left mainly from Mariel Harbor to the United States. In Cuba, they were labeled as traitors and gusanos (worms) by rallying supporters of the revolution and publicly declared as unwanted by Fidel Castro. Few experiences like that of Mariel refugees reveal the instrumentalization of Cubans’ exit in the political dispute between Cuba and the United States. As part of a Cold War script, then-President Jimmy Carter promoted a policy of “open heart, open arms” for the Cuban refugees. But in the emergence of Regan’s neoliberal era, media outlets, migratory authorities, and some of the earlier Miami based Cubans, contributed to the stigmatization of the so-called Marielitos as non-traditional refugee victims. 

Despite numerous stories of success amongst Marielitos, thousands were detained either for different kinds of crimes, having AIDS, or imprisoned upon arrival to the U.S. due to criminal records in Cuba. The riots in Atlanta Federal Penitentiary (1987) and the Federal Correctional Institution in Talladega (1991) are testimonies of resistance against their indefinite imprisonment. Marielitos were conceived as apatridas (rightless) by the Cuban legislation, regarded as not landed and thrown into a legal limbo in the U.S., denied their human condition, confronted by racism and homophobia in both places, separated from their families. Despite much, Marielitos thrived and their stories have started to emerge in recent recounts. My research seeks to register those stories of Marielitos both in the U.S. and Cuba.

Melina Economou

Melina Economou is a PhD student in the department of Anthropology at UC San Diego. Her research engages with transnational migration to examine the interrelationship between sociopolitical and historical factors, chronic stress, and health outcomes in refugees in Greece and Canada. She is passionate about engaging her research with refugee communities to inform policy and improve health outcomes for refugees resettled in temporary and permanent locations.

PROJECT

Creating Space: Community and Belonging among Refugees in Greece

With an increase in hate crimes and anti-immigrant rhetoric in Greece, this project considers how experiences of hostility or xenophobia construct refugees’ experience of wellbeing by investigating the community spaces that refugees create for themselves in urban Athens. I examine how refugees make unwelcome spaces livable by creating and maintaining cultural and religious practices in community and cultural centres. This grant will support preliminary research for a larger dissertation project following refugees along transnational migration journeys from Greece—a transient space of temporary resettlement—to Canada, a country of permanent third-country resettlement. 

Brent Eng

Brent Eng is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at UC Berkeley. He graduated from Williams College with a BA in English Literature and Arab Studies. Brent is interested in questions regarding the Levant, religion and the secular, post-colonial thought, and translation.

PROJECT

Of Bakeries: Life, Bread, and Repair amongst Syrians in Tripoli

This project studies the daily practices surrounding the production of bread at bakeries amongst Syrian refugees in Tripoli, Lebanon as a site of inhabited destruction, recollection, and collective repair. Using interviews and participant observation, the research aims to provide an ethnographic account of the sociality of the bakery where, born in an encounter with the experience of violence, there is an exploration and experimentation with possible imaginations of life. The project investigates this in terms of the ritualized techniques of bread-making, as well as the circuit of relationships that gravitate around bread’s production—both of which take place in proximity to mourning of the Syrian war.

Vianney Gavilanes

Vianney is a PhD candidate in Education at the University of California, Berkeley. She grew up in the Bay Area as a child of Mexican migrants and a migrant child herself. Prior to starting her PhD, she worked with community college and high school students in their pursuit of higher education. Her research examines an area of concern: the relationships between foreignness, whiteness, and public schooling. Vianney is committed to building and sustaining inclusive and just education for all.

PROJECT

‘Newcomer’ Students: Narratives of Refugeness/Migration and Educational Possibilities

My project engages with a critical notion of resilience as it explores the schooling experiences of refugee and migrant students or ‘newcomers’ in a CA public high school. Premising language as a form of politized representation, I analyze the cultural work produced through the narratives on refugee/migrant resilience. Using Photovoice I seek to understand how ‘newcomer’ students are building community in their new school and how they perceive their role as students. The research attempts to shift the gaze from damage to wellbeing stories centering the mindful (re)building of self and community.

Banah Ghadbian

Banah Ghadbian is a poet, jewelry artist, and PhD candidate at the University of California San Diego in Ethnic Studies. She received her B.A.s in Sociology and Comparative Women's Studies from Spelman College where she graduated as Valedictorian. 

PROJECT

Displaced Syrian Women’s Arts Spaces Embody Oppositional Worldmaking

Ghadbian's research focuses on how women in the Syrian Revolution open centers while under siege and in displacement. Ghadbian studies how women mobilize the arts within these spaces, such as theatre, poetry, and visual arts, to help youth navigate and challenge systems of violence. Her work looks at how women artists and teachers in the Syrian Revolution are building alternative societies, economies, and create new worlds underground as the Assad regime, extremist groups, and imperial powers attempt to annihilate Syria from the face of the earth.

June Kuoch

June Kuoch (they/them/theirs) has a B.S. in Sociology from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and is a current  MA student in the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Kuoch is second-generation Cambodian refugee who group-up in the heart of the Midwest, Minneapolis Minnesota (Dakota and Lakota territory).  Kuoch is also a 2019-2020 PAGE Fellow with Imagining America. Their master’s thesis examines feminist refugee epistemologies within the Southeast Asian refugee anti-deportation movement in order to the interconnections between prison abolition and critical refugee studies.

PROJECT

Digital Stories from the Southeast Asian Freedom Network (SEAFN)

A digital oral hxstory project, based on their master thesis will be collaborative hosted and formed with local community organizers with in the Southeast Asian Freedom Network (SEAFN), a national grassroots Southeast Asian refugee prison abolitionist group fighting to end “refugee-deportations”. The project is narrate and highlight the trails and tribulations within anti-deporation organizing. Uplifting the work of women, queer, and trans folk in movement work.

Saugher Nojan

Saugher Nojan is a Sociology Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Santa Cruz, with an emphasis on Critical Race, Ethnic Studies, and Education. She is the daughter and granddaughter of Afghan refugees. Her dissertation is a mixed-methods study examining race, religion, and civic engagement among Muslim Americans of different ethnic-racial backgrounds.

PROJECT

Wellbeing and Resilience Across Generations: Afghan Refugees “Doing Culture” and Resisting Anti-Muslim Racism
Afghans comprise one of the world’s largest protracted refugee populations as a result of more than four decades of war. Despite the increased number of Afghan refugees growing up in the U.S., research on this community remains limited to topics of national security and psychological trauma. This project adopts a “desire-based framework” (Tuck 2012) to shift dominant narratives on refugee communities as victims towards centering their agency, wellbeing, and resilience. Based on oral history interviews with first-generation and 1.5/second-generation Afghan refugees, this project examines how culture and religion influence Afghans’ capacities to navigate obstacles produced in the context of the long War on Terror. 

Samantha Streuli

Samantha Streuli is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at UCSD. Her work is broadly focused on health disparities, disability, and public health interventions, especially among migrants and refugees. She is particularly interested in how technology may be leveraged in the development of interventions and how conceptualizations of dis/ability impact the experiences of migrants and refugees.

PROJECT

“The Mother's Instincts Should Be Listened To:” How Somali refugees navigate a vaccine-promotion public health intervention

Through this project, I explore how refugees and refugee-serving nonprofits seek to promote resilience and wellbeing in refugee communities through strategies such as health interventions, community building, and technology use. My research includes an ethnography of a health intervention designed by a nonprofit, but the bulk of my work is focused on the epistemologies of the refugee community as they navigate and sometimes challenge health interventions. This project examines the health intervention as a site of encounter between nonprofit organizations and refugee communities while exploring the potential of refugee resilience to transform interventions that seek to improve health and wellbeing.

Karen Vang

Karen Vang is currently a graduate student in Cultural Studies at the University of California, Davis.  Karen previously earned a B.A. and M.A. in Communication Studies at Sacramento State University.  Drawing from critical refugee studies scholarship, Karen’s work lies at the intersection of Indigenous knowledges and Indigenous resistance in what we now know as Southeast Asia.  Karen’s work also engages the topics of postcolonial theories, Third World Feminism, and Indigenous Studies. 

PROJECT

Rooting our Branches

Throughout Hmong histories, ideologies of gender expectations remained complex.  Patriarchy functions as a primary principle of family, community, and social organizing.  Migrating from China to what we now know as Southeast Asia, has nearly wiped out Hmong women ancestry, spiritually, culturally, socially, and politically.  This can be seen through Hmong daughters, once married, belonging to her husband’s ancestral lineage.  This can have detrimental spiritual and material effects on a Hmong woman’s soul.  This project seeks to locate Hmong women, who has chosen to end her marriage in the northern California area, who may not have had any soul callings, or spirit healing rituals for years.  This project will also seek spirit healers whom are women, willing to perform these rituals for unmarried Hmong women. 

Rebecca Wear

Rebecca Wear is a PhD candidate and theatre director at UC Santa Barbara. Drawing on her research in Asian diasporas, neoliberalism, and queer feminist theories of labor, directing credits include Lloyd Suh’s The Chinese Lady (Artists At Play/Greenway Court); Lauren Yee’s Samsara (Coeurage Theatre); Eric Conner Marlin’s If the Saints (Metro Baptist); associate directing Lynn Nottage’s Sweat (Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Arena Stage) and others. She is a 2019-2020 National Directing Fellow (Eugene O'Neill/NNPN/Kennedy Center/SDC).  

PROJECT

Resilience and Re-envisioning Amongst Utaki

For centuries, hunter-gatherers, ancestors of mainland Chinese, and the historical lineage of mainland Japanese fought over the Ryukyuan islands. This history of violence continues, albeit one that emerges from neoliberalism’s carnage: climate change. Resilience and Re-envisioning Amongst Utaki (Resilience) takes up these histories by stretching 100 years into the future. Both a research process and a story map as a play, this new theatrical piece centers Okinawan and Ryukyuan people as epistemological sites of hope and resources, posits feminist performance as a way for envisioning possibilities of well-being, and imagines future communal ritual processes of grief and gratitude.

Lisa Dring

Lisa Dring is Associate Artistic Director of Circle X, a member of East West Players' Playwrights Group and a MacDowell Fellow. She was a finalist for the Relentless Award. Her plays been developed/produced by The New Group, Actors Theatre of Louisville, East West Players, Circle X, SCF @ Son of Semele, Bootleg, Theatre of NOTE, and Rogue Artists Ensemble. She is the co-founder of Rogue Lab, an incubator for hyper-theatrical new plays. lisasanayedring.com

PROJECT

Resilience and Re-envisioning Amongst Utaki

For centuries, hunter-gatherers, ancestors of mainland Chinese, and the historical lineage of mainland Japanese fought over the Ryukyuan islands. This history of violence continues, albeit one that emerges from neoliberalism’s carnage: climate change. Resilience and Re-envisioning Amongst Utaki (Resilience) takes up these histories by stretching 100 years into the future. Both a research process and a story map as a play, this new theatrical piece centers Okinawan and Ryukyuan people as epistemological sites of hope and resources, posits feminist performance as a way for envisioning possibilities of well-being, and imagines future communal ritual processes of grief and gratitude.

Cham Refugees Community (CRC)

Established in 1982 by Cham Muslim survivors of the Khmer Rouge genocide and Vietnam War, the Cham Refugees Community (CRC) is a nonprofit organization and community center. The CRC currently serves 1,600 individuals and families annually in Seattle and the surrounding area, offering social support services to a number of refugee communities, both Muslim and non-Muslim, including those from East Africa, Iraq and Burma. It is also one of the first Muslim communities to be established in Seattle.

PROJECT

Documenting the Past and Future: Stories from Cham Muslim Community Elders and Youth (Cham Refugees Community Documentary Film and Youth Film Competition)

The CRC is working on a dual film project. First, considering that there are few media representations of Cham people in the U.S., the CRC will produce a documentary film that will capture the history and experiences of first, 1.5, and second-generation Cham Americans. Secondly, considering that the transmission of history and culture through generations is fragmented, the CRC will also produce a youth film competition. This project would provide Cham youth with the opportunity to interview elders in their community, and/or showcase their experiences living in the U.S. as invisible ethnic minorities.

Lao Advocacy Organization of San Diego (LAOSD)

Lao Advocacy Organization of San Diego (LAOSD) is a grassroots, volunteer and community based organization with a mission to inspire and empower Laotian Americans through education, active engagement in civic and public affairs. LAOSD’s current focus is advocating for the inclusion of Laotian American Refugee History in California Schools with Assembly Bill 1393 (AB 1393). This bill is meant to diversify the experiences of Asian diasporic histories and indentities in the United States of America. The film will be directed by Lao-American, Sourita Siri.

PROJECT

Come Undone

“Come Undone” is a documentary about the journey of this bill, it’s importance to children of refugees, and to bring often estranged intergenerational conversations of what it means to be Lao-American. In addition, it will allow non Lao Americans to engage and experience Lao culture and to encourage the evolving community to be more vocal in impactful forums. This project will connect art, activism, storytelling, identity information and elevate community empowerment.

The Majdal Community Center

The Majdal Community Center, a grassroots, locally driven institution, empowers all members of the Arab community in San Diego. Through campaigning, advocacy, and cultural programming, we uplift Arab youth, workers, families, and elders, supporting them in overcoming whatever sociopolitical challenges they face. El Cajon, or ‘Little Baghdad,’ has been a hub for refugee resettlement, specifically Iraqi and more recently Syrians fleeing imperialist violence. This city exemplifies the resilience of peoples who have faced unimaginable struggle.

PROJECT

Arab Youth Summer Camp for Emerging Leaders

This is a week long summer camp hosted by members of the Majdal Community Center explicitly aimed at fostering creativity and linking the politics of displacement to restorative projects for youths that we have been cultivating these last 2 years. This camp will host a series of cultural/artistic workshops that make space for youth to re-articulate, re-create, and re-envision their understanding of what being an Arab refugee in this country is/can look like; what are their unique struggles but, also, how can we facilitate conversations that allow them to work through struggle and build into healing and resistance.

United Taxi Workers of San Diego

United Taxi Workers of San Diego is a union that supports taxi drivers and other transportation workers throughout San Diego County. What makes UTWSD unique is that it was founded in December 2010 by a community of East African refugee taxi drivers after organizing the first taxi strike in San Diego history. Since then, UTWSD has joined the San Diego Labor Council, became a permanent voting member in the MTS Taxi Advisory Committee, and has won significant victories such as “lifting the cap” on taxi permits in the City of San Diego and moving toward opening the Airport to all cabs. 

PROJECT

Refugee Drivers as Gig Survivors

UTWSD, in collaboration with UC San Diego Communications Professor, Dr. Lilly Irani, will look at how the “gig economy” functions for workers by interviewing current and former taxi drivers and TNC (Uber & Lyft) drivers about their experiences throughout their driving careers. The local San Diego Taxi industry has an unfortunate history of driver exploitation, and TNCs, upon initial observation, have turned out to be no exception. Through our research, we hope to make constructive critiques of the local livery industry, to recommend best practices, to prevent further exploitation of drivers in an industry where a vast majority of local drivers are immigrants and refugees.

Alexander Fattal

Dr. Fattal an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and a socio-cultural anthropologist and documentary artist whose research explores the representational politics of Colombia’s war and fitful efforts to forge a less violent future. He is the author of the award-winning Guerrilla Marketing: Counterinsurgency and Capitalism in Colombia (U. Chicago Press, 2019) and Shooting Cameras for Peace / Disparando Cámaras para la Paz (Harvard U. Press, 2020), and is the director of Limbo (2019, 25mins) and Trees Tropiques (2009, 30mins).  

PROJECT

Images of Resilience

Images of Resilience is a curatorial project to create a joint art exhibition that features the photographs from displaced youth in Colombia and San Diego. The exhibit will highlight the works from two participatory photography projects that have collaborated over the course of the last twenty years, The AjA project in City Heights, San Diego and Disparando Cámaras para la Paz (Shooting Cameras for Peace), on the outskirts of Bogotá, Colombia. The exhibition will raise the voices of the refugee youth while also celebrating the public art interventions the two projects have created, some jointly. 

Tamara Ho

Tamara C. Ho is an Associate Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at UCR. She participates in many interdisciplinary programs, such as the California Center for Native Nations (CCNN), SEATRiP (Southeast Asian Studies), and Medical Humanities. Her book Romancing Human Rights: Gender, Intimacy, and Power between Burma and the West (2015) analyzes Anglophone representations of Burmese women. Her research is published in Signs, PMLA, Discourse, and in various collections in Asian American studies.

PROJECT

BurmAmerica: Refugee Re-settlement, Food, and Resilience

This interdisciplinary study of Burmese Americans, diasporic foodways, and refugee resettlement focuses on resilience and collective well-being. Since 2004, more than 80,000 Burmese have resettled in the US after fleeing persecution. My research project uses food as an analytic to investigate Burmese American community-building as Asian American forms of natureculture and self-care.Comparing Midwestern and West Coast sites, this ethnographic study tracks Burmese immigrants’ involvement with local and transnational food-based economies and religious networks. This research will analyze how recent Burmese refugees have utilized and translated Southeast Asian foodways in their migration and adaptation to the US.

Yehuda Sharim

Yehuda Sharim is a filmmaker and a poet. His films, which appeared in various film festivals and universities across the world, provide an intimate study of immigration and displacement, shedding light on the changing constructions of home and belonging. His most recent film, Songs that Never End (Nov. 2019, 1h 54min), is concerned with the experiences of refugee youth; and he is currently at his work on his next film project, Letters2Maybe; and his book manuscript, We Are In It: An Anthology of Border Crossing, presents personal histories and accounts by refugees and those who seek refuge without documentation. Comprised of interviews in monologue form, both projects reveal the fear, trauma, and resilience of immigrants and refugees. 

Currently, he is an Assistant Professor in the Global Art Studies Program, University of California, Merced. He holds a Ph.D. in Culture and Performance from UCLA’s World Arts and Cultures program (2013).

Films
SONGS THAT NEVER END (2019): www.songsthatneverend.com

SEEDS OF ALL THINGS (2018): http://seedsofallthings.com

LESSONS IN SEEING (2017): http://www.lessonsinseeing.com

WE ARE IN IT (2016): http://weareinitfilm.com

PROJECT

Letters2Maybe

Letters2Maybe, a lyrical and poetic meditation on the experience of displacement and the constant confrontation with absence. This film moves through the dramatic moments of daily life, amid a backdrop of complex personal journeys and unimaginable circumstances, shedding light on quotidian encounters with all that cannot die but yet is never fully present. Letters2Maybe intimately portrays the emotional histories embedded in acts of border-crossing where one blockage leads to another, and immigration doesn’t necessarily end in one place or another, and where loss needs to be dealt with on a daily basis.

Michelle Bernardino

Michelle Muñoz Bernardino (she/they) is a high school Library Media Technician located in Tongva/Cahuilla lands. Michelle is a community artist by ways of zine-making, beading, poetry, short stories, and writing plays. Recently, Michelle completed the post-baccalaureate program in Women, Gender, and Sexualities Studies at Cal State, Los Angeles. Their community work and scholarship is rooted in reproductive justice, bodily autonomy, and indigenous feminist epistemologies particularly tied to Central American forced migrations and displacement. Michelle facilitates creative writing circles with refugee and immigrant youth, mothers, and incarcerated persons as forms of healing and a way to envision collective futures and realities.

PROJECT

Regresemos amor hasta el futuro: Cultivando futuros de buenvivir a través del arte y cosecha con comunidades desplazadas

This multifaceted projected is comprised of two larger projects—a renovation of a building to provide a space for creative arts and collective learning and a community garden rooted in food sovereignty and as a means of collective memory. This will take place in a shelter in Tijuana, Baja California. The intergenerational community based projects will be led by the elders and adults who form part of the displaced families who will share their conocimientos with children and youth about food and taking care of the garden. Additionally, teen youth will participate in a photography class and poetry course to document the entire process of renovation and the community garden. When the reception takes place, their work will be shared with everyone of this community. Healing through creative communal processes will take place once the renovation is complete—podcasts, screen printing, zine-making, and teatro comunitario will be some of the forms in which youth will engage and create their systems of support with other immigrant and refugee youth currently in Southern California.

Rita Phetmixay

Rita Phetmixay (she/they/boo) is a 2nd generation Lao Isaan American femme/womxn, politicized healing practitioner, social entrepreneur, independent audio producer, and an award-winning filmmaker based in Los Angeles, CA. Rita’s work is inspired by her traumatic experiences of overcoming domestic violence and sexual assault, fueling her to address the complex issues of refugee familial intergenerational trauma/healing/resilience in her current podcast platform titled Healing Out Laod.

PROJECT

HEALING OUT LAO’D 

The Healing Out Lao’d platform explores the intersections of Lao diaspora storytelling, healing, and tools for sustainability! More than just a podcast, this virtual practice space addresses the holistic mental health and wellness needs of the Lao refugee diaspora community that oftentimes gets overlooked by mainstream media. This space is intentional in centering the nuanced stories of the Lao diaspora by shifting public dialogue from surviving to thriving communities. Lastly, HOL intends to work with community partners and organizations to provide resources that promote the overall well-being of Lao and all refugee communities alike.

Krysada Phounsiri

Krysada Phounsiri is a Lao American professional dancer, award winning poet, engineer, and avid photographer. He is a Physics & Astrophysics double major, with a minor in Creative Writing from UC Berkeley. He published his debut poetry book, “Dance Among Elephants”, under Sahtu Press. Krysada is currently a Senior Optical Engineer for a BioTech company in San Diego. His dance resume includes various competition wins around the globe, performing in Jabbawockeez MUS.I.C show in Las Vegas, dancing on movie sets, and other creative projects. Many of his creative endeavors is connected to exploring Lao / Southeast Asian American identity and how it can be integrated in various spaces.

PROJECT

Secret, No More - An Expression of Humanity

“Secret, No More - An Expression of Humanity” is a photographic, illustrative, and poetic exhibition that aims to humanize the journey of people affected by the Secret War in Laos. It will also focus on how current day Lao Americans express this legacy via art and storytelling. The project is inclusive of all ethnicities of people of Laos who fled as refugees or are directly linked to the diaspora. The goal is to bridge the generational, cultural, and artistic gaps that are currently present within the Laotian community. This refugee diaspora has been hidden and silenced for decades. Because of the Secret War, Laos holds the title for the most bombed country per capita ever in world history.

The Southeast Asian Student Coalition (SASC)

The Southeast Asian Student Coalition (SASC) is a coalition between the Cambodian, Vietnamese, and Laotian students and alumni coming together on common issues to strengthen the community as a whole. Following a Southeast Asian youth summit at UC Berkeley in 2000, members from these student groups felt connected and saw a need for a space to address issues across the community. The mission statement of SASC is to unite Southeast Asian communities, particularly those bounded by the historical context of the Vietnam war, and to address the social injustices, economic inequalities and political under-representation that they face. 

PROJECT

20 Years In Solidarity 

The project is a film that will illustrate how in 2000, a half dozen undergraduate strangers at Cal with family histories as disparate as each nation-state in Southeast Asia, still found common ground and forged life-long friendships that continue twenty (20) years later to this day. We aim to feature this film at SASC’s 20th anniversary and to organize a 1-day event/retreat to which the co-founders, alumni and current members of SASC are invited, for sharing, reflection and vision setting for the next twenty (20) years of SASC.