Year One Grantees and Project Abstracts
Gia Dao
PhD Student, UC Berkeley
Bio: My name is Gia Dao; I am a second-year Ph.D. student in History at UC Berkeley. I received my B.A. in Comparative Literature and East Asian Studies from Brown University. As a first-generation immigrant – and a queer one – I have always been invested in questions of identity, cultural memory, and gender and sexuality. For my undergraduate Honors Thesis, I translated Khái Hưng’s "Hồn bướm mơ tiên" (A Butterfly Dreams of Heaven) from Vietnamese into English; and I argued that the text can be read under a queer critique to rethink the configurations of gender and sexuality established by prevailing scholarship on Vietnam’s modernity. At Berkeley, I continue to draw from both literary and historical sources. My current research pivots around issues of the Vietnamese experience as it relates to language and nationalism, diaspora, and queerness.
Project Abstract: My interview with the Ho Chi Minh City-based queer activist, Huỳnh Minh Thảo, is part of a broader objective in my studies to track the development of LGBT+ rights in Vietnam. Presently, the Vietnamese government does not officially recognize same-sex marriages. Although same-sex unions have no legal recognition in Vietnam, these unions are not forbidden either. Most recently, in 2022, the Health Ministry of Vietnam officially confirmed that being queer is not an illness and therefore “conversion therapy” would be banned. And the Law on Marriage and Family is expected to be revised when the Constitution is updated in 2024 or 2025. But exactly, how did these progressive developments arise? What activism and lobbying were involved? And what are the chances for same-sex marriages to be legalized when the Constitution is amended? Given his prolific work as an activist for over a decade, Huỳnh Minh Thảo holds great insights on the inner workings of VietPride, the problems faced by queer organizing groups, and the current state of LGBT+ rights in Vietnam. My interview with Mr. Huỳnh fundamentally addresses the historical concerns surrounding the modernization of Vietnamese gender and sexuality that I plan to continue exploring in my dissertation.
Kavitha Ganesan
Centre for the Promotion of Knowledge and Language Learning, Universiti Malaysia Sabah
Bio: Dr Kavitha Ganesan is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for the Promotion of Knowledge and Language Learning, Universiti Malaysia Sabah. Primarily trained in English Literature, Kavitha’s journey with the indigenous Lundayehs began ten years ago through her broader work in the field of gender and postcolonial studies. She has spent time in the native village of Long Pasia studying the changes to the Lundayeh diet due to the influence brought by modernization and encroaching deforestation activities which had far reaching consequences to the gender complementarity that existed among the Lundayeh male and female. Her article on the shifting food systems has been published in James Cook University’s in-house journal, eTropic (“Environmental Challenges and Traditional Food Practices: The Indigenous Lundayeh of Long Pasia, Sabah, Borneo”, Vol. 19, No.1, 2020). It is while collecting the data for her research on the food systems that she secured a grant from the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education to document the oral tradition of the indigenous Lundayehs thus beginning her journey in the oral histories of the community. Her chapter, “Headhunting and Native Agency in Lundayeh Oral Literature” has been published in The Routledge Companion to Humanism and Literature (2022) edited by Michael Bryson. She recently won the microgrant for Environmental Humanities Month from the University of Helsinki for her work on the Tengayen Snack, which is a crisp form innovated by her research team from the traditional Lundayeh soup, biter. Kavitha currently serves as the Deputy Dean of Research, Innovation, and Community Services at the centre where she has been working for the past twenty years.
Project Abstract: This SEA Lives project aims to bring together the researcher and two female members—Bua Adan and Pith Kaya—from a subsistent farming family in the remote highland location of Long Pasia, Sabah, Malaysia, for a dialogue session where, through a three-way interaction, it is hoped that the oral histories of these multi-generational women may be recorded audio-visually with relationality being at the heart of the documentation process. A three-prong dialogic and relational recording is necessary in such collection and examination of life histories because the main aim is to understand a sense of relationship; the relationship these two Lundayeh women collectively share with their land vis a vis home, the relationship they share with one another as mother-daughter while having differing worldviews regarding the land that is increasingly encroached by deforestation activities, and the scholarship shared with the interviewer as the person recording the accounts. The phenomenological novelty in the positioning of these subjects and their diversity in perspectives will be able to speak against the universalizing tenor of lives narrativized by the hegemonic centre. By restoring the voices of the indigenous women who are battling against the challenges brought to their land, this project gives “voice” and “representation” to the illiterate women situated in one of the remotest regions of Sabah, Malaysia.
Chi Yen Ha
PhD student, University of California Riverside
Bio: Chi Yen Ha (she/they) is a PhD student in Cultural Anthropology at University of California, Riverside (UCR). She holds an MA in Southeast Asian Studies from UCR (2022) and a BA in International Studies/Cultural Psychology from Trinity College, CT (2016). Her research foci include indigeneity and ethnicity, textiles and material culture, creative economy, posthumanism, political ecology, political ontology, and ethnic minority issues in Vietnam as well as in Southeast Asia. She has also been actively involved in ethnic minority rights movement and community-based development in Vietnam since 2019. Her current project examines the natural dyeing collaborations between ethnic minority artisans and Kinh designers in Vietnam’s growing eco-fashion movement.
Project Abstract: My research examines textile making as a cultural practice and an economic activity in the Hmong community in Pà Cò, Hoà Bình Province, Vietnam. A culturally significant material that embodies womanhood ideals and maintains social relationships, Hmong textiles became a critical commodity in the local upland economy after the state’s opening of highland tourism in the early 1990s and the subsequent agenda of cultural preservation. In the past decade, Hmong women in Pà Cò have become major actors in the growing eco-fashion movement in Vietnam for their expertise in hand-making natural textiles, and have worked extensively with Vietnamese designers and craft-makers who seek sustainable inspirations for their creative practices. My research seeks to understand the roles and experiences of Hmong artisans within these dynamic networks of textile activities, including commerce and creative collaborations, since the 1980s. I will interview two textile artisans about their life histories in relation to textiles, specifically their views on how textile-related activities have changed and how these changes have impacted their lives. These interviews will offer important insights to elucidate the shifting dynamics of indigenous textile economy within different sociopolitical contexts, and the relationships among materials, artisans, and creative workers in Vietnam’s contemporary creative economy.
Victoria Huynh
PhD Student, UC Berkeley
Bio: Victoria is a PhD student in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. Her research interests broadly center around critical refugee studies, Southeast Asian Studies, prison abolition, and questions of memory, ancestral knowledge, and social change.
Project Abstract: My project uses oral histories to document transnational Buddhist rituals of collective healing in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Specifically, I focus on the Great Mass Requiem, a series of mourning rituals conducted by the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh in 2007, as a form of counter-memory that challenges historical erasure in Vietnamese national memory. My project asks: how might the Great Mass Requiem constitute a form of decolonial healing, one which can intervene against the psychic legacies of imperial warfare? Ultimately, I hope to create a digital site of memory for a transnational Vietnamese audience, helping war survivors and their descendants to lay their dead to rest.
Kirt Mausert
PhD Student, UC Berkeley
Bio: Kirtana Dasa (Kirt) Mausert is a PhD student in sociocultural and linguistic anthropology at UC Berkeley, and a recipient of the Diebold Fellowship in Linguistic Anthropology, Malini Chowdhury Fellowship on Bangladesh Studies, and Regents Fellowship. His dissertation research focuses on the linguistic semiotics and graphic politics of Rohingya scripts and written language. Kirt holds a B.A. degree with honors in linguistics from Binghamton University, and an A.M. degree in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining the anthropology program at Cal, Kirt conducted ethnographic field research for the United Nations International Organization for Migration in Bangladesh, and organized civic education programs with Rohingya activists and refugee women’s organization Shanti Mohila. Blacklisted from Myanmar in late 2017, Kirt worked as Senior Program Trainer of the Institute for Political and Civic Engagement, Rangoon, Burma; volunteer instructor at Rohingya-led Women Peace Network Arakan; and, since 2010, associate curator of Pansodan Gallery. Kirt is advised by William F. Hanks, Professor of Anthropology, Berkeley Distinguished Chair in Linguistic Anthropology, and Affiliated Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.
Project Abstract: As part of the SEALIVES project, this research project focuses on elicited life histories of Rohingya scholars and cultural experts displaced to Chittagong, Bangladesh. A major urban center of some 8.4 million residents, Chittagong adjoins Cox’s Bazar District, now home to the world’s largest refugee settlement and over a million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. From their exile in Bangladesh, Rohingya historians, politicians, and poets continue to publish written works addressing the struggle of Myanmar’s Rohingya minority in the face of decades of genocidal Buddhist violence. Working with Rohingya scholars, this research invites interlocutors to participate in the co-production of kin and vocational genealogies of Rohingya intellectuals, linguistic elicitation of specialized registers of Rohingya ethnometapragmatics, and documentation of ethnohistorical material pertaining to the development of Rohingya scripts and written language. Drawing on my experience and training as an educator and anthropologist, this research project is rooted in both a reflexive praxis of radical solidarity and a commitment to equitable ethnographic engagement.
Socheat Nhean
Director of Secretariat of Royal University of Fine Arts
Bio: I am from Cambodia. I graduated from the Royal University of Fine Arts in archaeology in 2004. Two months before my graduation, I started my job at the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), where I interviewed hundreds of former Khmer Rouge soldiers and victims. In 2007, I went to Northern Illinois University, where I graduated in 2009 with an MA in anthropology. I returned to work at DC-Cam, where I was appointed Editor-in-Chief of Searching for the Truth Magazine. Between 2014 and 2015, I studied arts and archaeology at SOAS, University of London. I returned to DC-Cam in September 2015, where I was appointed Director of the Media Center. Two years later, in 2017, I was appointed to work at the Royal University of Fine Arts. I was promoted to Director of Academic Affairs in 2020 and to Director of Secretariat in 2023.
Project Abstract: The goal of this project is to capture, record, and preserve people who possess unique abilities, such as dancing, painting, singing, narrating stories, and playing musical instruments. We refer to those individuals as "Living Heritages." Documenting the lives of individuals preserving cultural legacies is crucial because it gives older people a sense of importance and acknowledgement. Two or more senior citizens will be invited to offer their knowledge and expertise in video recording through this initiative. A condensed, around thirty-minute version of the video will be edited and produced. There are now 26 active heritages in Cambodia. But a few of them were dead. The livings are in their late seventies and early eighties. They started educating students in the 1980s, when the university had not yet reopened after closing under the Khmer Rouge rule, and had dedicated practically their whole lives to reviving Khmer arts and culture. For this project, the primary candidates for in-depth interviews are Mr. Chet Chorn and Mr. Chan Sim. The former is the traditional painter and drawer, and the latter is the craftsman and sculptor. Due to their unique abilities and national contributions, they are revered figures.
Daniel Owen
PhD Student, UC Berkeley
Bio: Daniel Owen is a PhD student in UC Berkeley’s South & Southeast Asian Studies program with a designated emphasis in Critical Theory. His research focuses on Indonesian poetry and social change from the 1980s to the present. Research interests include translation studies, Indonesian history, small press publishing, critical theory, classical Malay literature, global modernisms, social movements, and critical racial and ethnic studies. Daniel is a poet, translator, and editor. Publications of his poetry include the books Celingak-Celinguk (Tan Kinira, 2021), Restaurant Samsara (Furniture Press, 2018), and Toot Sweet (United Artists Books, 2015). His translations from Indonesian include Afrizal Malna’s Document Shredding Museum (Reading Sideways Press, 2019 & World Poetry Books, 2024) and various poems by Malna and Farhanah that have been published online and in print journals. Since 2013, Daniel has edited and designed books and participated in various collective processes as part of Brooklyn-based nonprofit publisher Ugly Duckling Presse’s editorial collective.
Project Abstract: This project revolves around themes of urbanization, social change, and resilience in Indonesia through the stories of two lives. The first, Mbah Yem, is the longtime proprietor of an angkringan—an open-air food stall—in Yogyakarta. Mbah Yem’s angkringan is a lynchpin of social life in the Danunegaran neighborhood. As part of the wave of gentrification that has struck Yogyakarta recently, the plot of land on which she works and lives has been sold, most likely to be developed for tourism. By speaking with Mbah Yem about her life and the changes she has seen, this project will give voice to a unique experience of urbanization and displacement. The second, Afrizal Malna, is a renowned poet from Jakarta whose literary ethos has always been one of witness and engagement. In the 1990s Afrizal participated in the social movement that helped end the New Order and begin an era of democratic reforms in 1998. Following this, he spent several years devoting his energy to the Urban Poor Consortium, an organization that supports communities in struggles for self-determination when faced with eviction. Rather than discussing his literary output, this project will focus on Afrizal’s experiences of Jakarta throughout the years.
Margiana Petersen-Rockney
Postdoctoral Researcher, UC Berkeley
Bio: Margiana Petersen-Rockney is a political ecologist who studies climate equity and agrarian change. She is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher in UC Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy. Her research focuses on agricultural adaptation to climate change, rural livelihoods, and local institutional control. Margiana grew up on a farm and operated her own farm before completing her PhD at UC Berkeley (ESPM Dept.) where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow.
Project Abstract: Our ongoing community engaged research with Hmong farmers in California documents agrarian diasporas, climate change vulnerabilities and risks, and disparities in land and water policy enforcement. Since the mid-2010s, thousands of Hmong farmers have moved to rural areas of northern California from cities like Fresno, California and St. Paul, Minnesota to retire, live in community, and farm. Many farmers grow subsistence vegetable gardens, raise small livestock, and some also grow cannabis. Today, Hmong farmers in the region face twin crises of racially biased rural policing and climate change-induced wildfires and drought. With UCB SEAS Southeast Asian Lives and Histories Project funding, I will work with community partners to conduct oral life history interviews with one multigenerational Hmong farming family in Siskiyou County. From these interviews, we will craft a multi-media output to share stories of Hmong agrarian diasporas and migrations, and how Hmong American families are building community resilience in the face of climate change impacts and policy disparities.
Jenny Pham
PhD Student, UC Berkeley
Bio: Thach Jenny Pham is a third-year History Ph.D. student and Mellon-Chancellor Fellow at UC, Berkeley where she specializes in 20th century Southeast Asian history. Her research interests include the Vietnam War, women and gender history, Asian American history, transnational and migration history. Jenny is currently working on a project centered on the social and diplomatic history of the Vietnam War from 1973-1975. Jenny’s research has been supported by the Department of Education (FLAS) and various Berkeley institutions including the Center for Race and Gender Studies, the Center for Southeast Asia Studies, and the Global, International and Area Studies hub. At Berkeley, she has served as the graduate student instructor for history of Japan, history of California, and Immigrants and Immigration as United States history. Jenny is also a founding member of the Southeast Asia Graduate Working Group at Berkeley. She holds a B.A. and M.A. in political science from Georgia State University. She also has over 4 years of combined work experience on congressional and local campaigns, nonprofits, and university public relations and marketing. In her free time, Jenny enjoys kayaking, cooking, and thrifting.
Project Abstract: My project addresses three neglected topics in the study of the Vietnam War. The first is the history of the Republic of Vietnam which has received comparatively less academic attention than the American intervention or Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The second topic is the final phase of the war from 1973-1975, a period overshadowed in the literature by studies on the origins of the conflict in the 1950s or turning points of the 1960s. The third topic is the social history of the war as experienced by mid-level officials and ordinary people rather than the conventional political history dominated by elites. American-centric scholars focus on the effects of U.S. strategies and domestic affairs on South Vietnam; thereby, downplaying the agency of the South Vietnamese. Moreover, the exit of American troops following the signing of the Paris Accords in January 1973 has contributed to the neglect of the final phase of the conflict (1973-1975) by U.S-centric scholars. I propose to examine how mid-level bureaucrats and other members of society representing South Vietnam’s diverse class, racial, and gender makeup (ex. religious figures, bar girls, entertainers, local intelligentsia and artists) experienced the last three years of the war.
Alicia Phaviseth
Undergraduate Student, UC Berkeley
Bio: Alicia is currently an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley pursuing her degree in Southeast Asian Studies. Her focus lies in the rich tapestry of Thailand's culture and language, along with a deep interest in exploring female narratives within Southeast Asia. Presently, Alicia is working on a project that delves into the female perspective of Laotian Refugees in California. This project specifically highlights the profound impact of the Secret War on women, a subject close to her heart due to her familial connections and community ties. Beyond her academic pursuits, Alicia enjoys various forms of art, whether it's painting, writing poetry, or exploring different artistic media.
Project Abstract: This study delves into the unique resettlement experience of Laotian female refugees after the Secret War and Lao Civil War, with a focus on Teo Oudom's personal journey from Laos to the United States. Teo Oudom, a young mother and wife, embarked on this transformative journey with her husband and mother-in-law, leaving behind her homeland and loved ones forever. After arriving in New York, she gave birth to her second child and then journeyed to California, where she would eventually establish her new home. Amid the challenges of being a young mother and wife, Teo Oudom also struggled with the complexities of her Laotian identity in the US. Her inspiring story embodies sacrifice, unwavering commitment, and resilience, reflecting the experiences of other women who resettled outside of Southeast Asia following the war. This research is a tribute to Teo Oudom and all the valiant women who have fought for their families and their futures.
Tani Sebro
Associate professor, Cal Poly Humboldt
Bio: I am an Associate Professor of Global Politics at Cal Poly Humboldt. My scholarly work centers on how displaced peoples create a sense of nation while in exile with a particular emphasis on refugee politics in Southeast Asia. Through long-term and in-depth ethnographic research along the Thai-Myanmar border, I examine how minority refugees from Myanmar maintain trans-national networks through the use of performance, activism, and humanitarianism. My work has appeared in Political Geography, Critique of Anthropology, the Review of Human Rights, and in various edited volumes. My in-progress book manuscript, Aesthetic Nationalism: The Dance of War and Exile along the Thai-Myanmar Border, is based on embedded field research in Northern Thailand, where I conducted ethnographic and archival research with Tai refugees from Myanmar. My research has been funded by a Fulbright ASEAN U.S. Scholar Research Fellowship, The National Endowment for the Humanities, and The École française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO). In 2022, I was awarded the McCrone Award for Most Promising Scholar at Cal Poly Humboldt. I currently serve as Co-Chair of the Burma Studies Group at the Association for Asian Studies.
Project Abstract: “The Migrant Voices Project: Digital Storytelling from the Tai Diaspora.” This digital humanities research project collates autoethnographic narratives of recently arrived migrants from Myanmar to Thailand, emphasizing the importance of cultural self-determination and personal storytelling. The multimedia project records the autoethnographic narratives of Tai migrants, including video, imagery, and audio recorded narratives. The project involves the establishment of a companion website to my book project, Aesthetic Nationalism: The Dance of War and Exile along the Thai-Myanmar Border, which will contain media, as well as narratives, images and teaching resources about the refugee crisis along the Thai-Myanmar border. Aesthetic Nationalism is based on over two years of ethnographic fieldwork along the Thai-Myanmar border amongst the Tai peoples, a forcibly displaced ethnic minority group from Myanmar. The medium of digital storytelling presents in the current digital and social media age an opportunity for wide dissemination and therefore the potential to educate a diverse audience about the complexities of migration, and the lives of migrants who persist despite harrowing conditions. This project will contribute a digital dimension to my book project, as well as provide numerous accessible teaching resources to be used in my courses at Cal Poly Humboldt, by educators, NGO workers, and interest groups.
Sheherazade
PhD Candidate, Environmental Sciences, Policy, and Department, UC Berkeley
Bio: Sheherazade (or Shera) is from Sulawesi, Indonesia. Growing up on a small farm close to the tropical rainforest, little Shera always dreamed of spending her life in the forest with animals. Knowing that biology would make her be in the forest, she moved to Jakarta to study. Struggling with her thick Sulawesi accent at first, she managed to obtain her bachelor’s degree from Universitas Indonesia. She then worked in a grassroots organization, changing her career track from an ecologist to a conservation scientist. After obtaining her MS degree in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation from the University of Florida, Shera worked as a conservation scientist at the Wildlife Conservation Society Indonesia. Her involvement ranged from leading biodiversity research to support conservation policy to creating national-level capacity-building programs for young scientists. Throughout her career, learning the dark history of conservation and witnessing how indigenous and local communities have been sidelined in top-down approaches, Shera decided to return to Sulawesi and co-founded an initiative that centres on people and redefines conservation from the bottom up. She received a Fulbright Scholarship and is currently a second-year Ph.D. student in ESPM at UC Berkeley, studying the governance of different conservation models in Southeast Asia.
Project Abstract: Life at the border: voices of the ‘unrecognized’ “Ah ya dia itu yang di sana so sampe Jakarta, tau juga”, Bapak Tetua Adat told me his fascination and confusion about a customary leader from other group -residing in the western part of the reserve- who went to the capital. Although they are coming from the same indigenous group, only this western group that received formal recognition from the government, leaving Bapak Tetua Adat along with his small groups in the eastern part of the reserve left ‘unrecognized’. The lack of recognition implies insignificance and opens the life of Bapak Tetua Adat to be defined and framed by others for decades. My film aims to support Bapak Tetua Adat to show his world, his life in his own terms, claim his agency. I embrace the concept of pluriverse ‘many worlds’ to ground my film project which will focus on Bapak Tetua Adat everyday life and the way he navigates his ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ , or whole world. This allow me to take a step back to understand how Bapak Tetua Adat-indigenous community perceive their land, how is the meaning of land to them. Through this, the concept of ‘conservation’ could be contested, rebuilt, and redefined bottom-up to reflect and accommodate the diverse values and worlds ‘pluriverse’.
Harifa Siregar
Visual Culture Literacy research group, Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), West Java, Indonesia.
Bio: Harifa ‘pye’ Siregar is an assistant professor at the Visual Culture Literacy Research Group, the School of Arts and Design, Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), Indonesia, and a Ph.D. candidate in the Moving Image Studies program at Georgia State University, Atlanta. His research focuses on non-theatrical film, film history, and archival research. His dissertation, "Location, Moving Images, and Industrialization: Goodyear’s Documentary, Conquering the Jungle, and Changing Landscape of a Plantation Site," discusses "Conquering the Jungle," an industrial film by Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in 1920 about their plantation in Sumatra and how it affected the site's development, the global rubber market, and the people's historicity, among other things. Since joining the ITB in 2011, after he graduated from the Design Studies program at the same school, Pye has been actively involved in teaching and researching the related issues of Indonesian contemporary culture and lifestyle as depicted in film and historical archives.
Project Abstract: My project focuses on filming Anton Solihin, the owner and caretaker of Batu Api Library. Batu Api is a private library in Jatinangor, an education area around 26 miles from Bandung, the capital of West Java province, Indonesia. Since it was founded on April 1, 1999, Batu Api has collected thousands of books and documents about Indonesia, as well as films, musical recordings, and newspaper clippings. Anton and Batu Api would provide interesting stories about the side of Indonesia that many people, in the U.S. and even in Indonesia, might not be aware of. The story might not have a direct relationship with daily life in the U.S., but it most likely has been shaped, influenced, and affected by U.S.-sponsored globalization. An audio-visual medium will capture not only Anton as the caretaker of the place but also the library's physical structure and its collections and offer a glimpse of its daily activities. This project would open opportunities for research institutions in the United States to obtain different perspectives on Indonesia. The materials Anton collected are probably not available elsewhere and offer an exciting reading of many aspects of contemporary Indonesia and possibilities for a new research direction.
Puangchon Unchanam and Khorapin Phuaphansawat
Assistant Professor in Political Science at Naresuan University and Assistant Professor in Political Science at Chulalongkorn University
Bio: Puangchon Unchanam is an Assistant Professor in Political Science at the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, Naresuan University, Thailand. His research interests include global capitalism, Marxist theory, and social inequality and class conflict in Thailand. He is the author of Royal Capitalism: Wealth, Class, and Monarchy in Thailand (University of Wisconsin Press, 2020). Khorapin Phuaphansawat is an Assistant Professor in Political Science at the Department of International Relations, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. Her research interests include contemporary Thai politics, social movements, resistance, and crisis of capitalism. She wrote an article titled “Anti-Royalism in Thailand Since 2006: Ideological Shifts and Resistance” (2018) and a book chapter titled “Monarchy and Metapolicies in Thailand: The Early Years of King Rama X’s Reign” (2023).
Project Abstract: Thailand’s lèse-majesté law has been a serious threat to human rights, civic liberty, and democratic values in the kingdom. According to this law, it is a crime to defame, insult, or threaten the king, queen and regent. With penalties that can be up to fifteen years imprisonment for each count, it has notoriously been dubbed the “world’s harshest lèse-majesté law.” Recently, this draconian law has been extensively used to persecute hundreds of participants and supporters of the monarchy-reform movement, which broke the kingdom’s biggest taboo by criticizing the monarch, royal power, and royal wealth in explicit manners and demanding the crown to be held accountable. While most scholars and the media focus on the movement’s prominent leaders, this interview project examines how Thai commoners with socio-economic disadvantages decided to join the movement and how they have endured legal prosecutions. In this project, we plan to interview two marginalized victims of the lèse-majesté law. Pornchai Wimolsupawong is an ethnic minority salesman who was accused for posting lese-majeste messages and video clip on his Facebook account. Jatuporn Sae-ung is an LGBTQIA+ activist who was sentenced for three years of imprisonment as she did gestures which deemed mocking the queen.
Kenneth Van Bik
Assistant Professor, California State University, Fullerton
Bio: Ken Van Bik is currently an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at California State University, Fullerton. Dr. Van Bik grew up in Hakha, Chin Sate, Myanmar, the fourth son of a Bible translator and a primary school teacher. After earning a Bachelor’s in Physics from Yangon University Van Bik studied at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, where he had an opportunity to work with Berkeley linguist James A. Matisoff and become convinced that he was more interested in linguistics than theology. He went on to earn his Ph.D. in Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, where his dissertation reconstructed a hypothetical ancestor-language of the modern Chin languages, analyzing how Chin languages are related to one another. Up to the present time, Ken continues his research on many aspects of Chin languages, especially concentrating on the documentation of the ones which are currently endangered by the repressive socio-political atmosphere in Myanmar. Ken is fluent in Hakha Lai, Burmese, Falam Chin, and English. He was the main interviewer in the project, The Chin Folklife Survey of Indiana University, Bloomington (Summer 2023). As a field linguist, he also has extensive experiences in interviewing speakers of minority languages in Myanmar.
Project Abstract: In this project, I plan to interview two Chin elders in US Chin diaspora communities, beginning in Frederick, MD where several important potential interviewees reside. These elders grew up and worked in Myanmar, but came to the US as refugees in their attempt to flee from persecution and possible arrest by the Burmese military government. The interviewees include a former lecturer at Yangon University, a former lawyer, a retired nurse, a retired schoolteacher, a retired civil officer, and a pastor. All of them had worked in many parts of Myanmar for several decades. The lived stories of these elders constitute an important contribution to the record and history of Chin communities both here and abroad, as they shed light on the living situation in Myanmar during Ne Win’s government, its subsequent military administrations, and the short democratic government led by Aung San Suu Kyi. Their lives and stories will be invaluable records in the history of the Chin people in Myanmar. Pending interviewee permission, digitized files will be publicly archived and recordings will also be transcribed and translated, meaning that the texts will provide valuable linguistic data in addition to their socio-cultural and community value.
Karen Bao Vang
PhD Candidate, UC Davis
Bio: Karen Bao Vang is a Hmong woman navigating as a Cultural Studies Ph.D. Candidate at the University of California, Davis with her parents and children. She understands and is grateful for her three children and her parents’ supporting her through her education. Her research focuses on ways that we can regenerate different ways of knowing, being, and doing within Hmong families. Her research areas include spirits and ancestral memories as knowledge and literacy.
Project Abstract: This project collects oral histories from Hmong women healers. With this, I hope to trace ancestral knowledges through our cultural practices such as wedding ceremonies, funeral ceremonies, and childbirth ceremonies from a women’s perspective. It is my project’s goal to bring into conversation how gender-based violence have kept Hmong women out of ancestral ways of knowing by severing their ancestral lineages through rituals. Additionally, this project seeks to reframe cultural practices to highlight the importance Hmong women play in their communities as knowledge keepers.
Justin Weinstock
PhD Candidate, Sociocultural Anthropology, UC Berkeley
Bio: Justin Weinstock is a doctoral candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology at UC Berkeley. His work examines the formation and negotiation of boundaries in everyday life, technological transductions of political insecurities into environmental concerns, and posthumanism, broadly speaking. Funded by a Fulbright-Hays DDRA fellowship, inter alia, his dissertation research pursues these interests through the contemporary modes of living of the Jahai, an aboriginal people (Orang Asli) who inhabit the present-day Thai-Malaysian borderland. Before beginning his doctoral studies, Justin also conducted interspecies ethnographic fieldwork (supported by a Fulbright Student Research Grant and a National Geographic Society Early Career Grant) on the ways Malaysian mahouts translocate “rogue” wild elephants to protected areas and train, bond with, and care for their captive charges at the National Elephant Conservation Center at Kuala Gandah. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and Asian Studies from Cornell University.
Project Abstract: This SEALives project records select life histories of the Jahai — a not well-known aboriginal people (Orang Asli) — to recast histories of boundary-making in a Southeast Asian periphery that is itself under-studied. The partitioning of the forest where Jahai have long foraged when the current Thai-Malaysian border was formed back in 1909 had little impact on their mobile way of life until the upheaval of the Cold War's “Malayan Emergencies” (1948 – 1960; 1968 – 1989), which placed Jahai on the line between friend and foe, their political allegiances interrogated like never before. Many Jahai were abruptly resettled outside the forest, surveilled, and conscripted. These and subsequent governmental interventions especially south of the border led Jahai on either side to diverge from one another as they explored the emergent possibilities and challenges of life in distinct national environments. Audio-recorded semi-structured interviews with key Jahai from Thailand and Malaysia will probe how they negotiate the border’s presence in their everyday lives as it intersects with a multiplicity of other boundaries (in an expansive, not merely geopolitical sense) about which Jahai also travel. Among the entangled "borderlines" that guide this inquiry are statelessness / citizenship, traditional foraging / wage labor, mobility / settlement, female economic autonomy / domesticity and dependence, the threshold of religious conversion, and the non/human. Attending to the rich life experiences of these individuals as they have enacted, evaded, manipulated, and blurred manifold boundaries in their everyday will offer a novel standpoint to situate the history and contemporary of the Southeast Asian borderland to which they belong.
Alan Yeh
PhD Candidate, French, UC Berkeley
Bio: Alan Yeh is a Ph.D. candidate in French at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studies refugitude aesthetics, memory, care, and food in 20th- and 21st-century French and Francophone literature, especially of the Vietnamese diaspora. Prior to coming to Berkeley, Alan previously taught English in the Occitanie region of France and received his B.A. in both French and Literature from Hamilton College in central New York, having also studied for a year at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris III. In recent years, he has presented papers on the works of Kim Thúy, Linda Lê, and Viet Thanh Nguyen. He currently has a forthcoming article on Lê’s refugitude aesthetics. Coming from a family of immigrants and refugees, he strongly believes in the critical power of “me-search” and considers the intersections and tensions of his own identity (as Vietnamese/Korean/Chinese American) and personal histories as inextricable from a critical approach to literary and historical study. When he is not poring over experimental literary aesthetics, he can be found experimenting in the kitchen, trying new restaurants in the Bay Area, or singing his heart out in karaoke with friends.
Project Abstract: This project explores diasporic Vietnamese culinary histories and practices of care, as part of a larger dissertation entitled “Con ăn cơm chưa?” or “Child, have you eaten yet?” which uncovers intergenerational and transdiasporic approaches to care through the lens of food and feeding as found in diasporic literature, national archives, and community oral histories. Interviewing restaurateurs in France and Vietnam from refugee backgrounds or with family histories of displacement, this research raises the following questions: How do relationships to food and feeding evolve through generations of displacement? How might these be similar or different across national contexts? What lessons about care can be learned not only from refugees, but also post-refugee generations and those who have “returned” to Vietnam? Whereas discourse about the Vietnamese diaspora often centralizes attention on Vietnamese communities in the US, this project focuses instead on the ongoing ramifications of France’s colonial legacy, highlighting historical threads between consecutive imperial projects that have resulted in generations of displacement. Expanding upon extant US-based oral history collections, not only does this project seek to preserve often forgotten histories and unacknowledged practices of care, but the perspectives that come out it will also help facilitate transdiasporic dialogue and healing.