Hmong Studies Fellows, 2009-10
The Program in Asian American Studies and the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota are hosting both a postdoctoral and a graduate fellow in Hmong Studies, generously funded by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation.
The full press release can be found here.
Leena Neng Her received her PhD in Educational Linguistics from Stanford University in 2009. Her project, "Educational Opportunity, Minority Status, and Discursive Practices in the Hmong Diaspora," combines research conducted in Laos and in the United States in which she pursues structural constraints such as minority status, the institution of schooling, and American and Lao culture as central frames to interpret social phenomena. Her work follows the ethnography of how one school community in the US explained minority academic failure, identify educational problems and consequently propose solutions and compares it to similar discourse about Hmong student experiences in Laos and access to higher education.
Giac-Thao (Alisia) Tran is a PhD candidate in Psychology at the University of Minnesota. Her project, "Leaving out Hmong - What do we really leave out?" explores parental racial/ethnic socialization as a protective factor against discrimination in Hmong families. Her research shows that different types of socialization strategies are associated with positive and negative youth and family outcomes, rendering it even more important to uncover the complex interrelations between sociocultural contexts, family practices, and youth outcomes.