Global Fieldwork
Cuetzalan, Puebla, Mexico
Community Resistance And Indigenous Sovereignty
- Date
- May 2024
- Academic Partner
- Augsburg University
- Focus
- Masejwual territory and community defense
In Cuetzalan, our group worked with Augsburg University and met people whose lives sit at the center of arguments often made far away from them. Migrants spoke about the United States through distance from family and money sent home. The fear produced by policy was ordinary in the most unsettling way. Organizers and elders spoke with the precision of people who had defended land before researchers arrived.
The strongest lesson came from Masejwual communities resisting mining projects and hydroelectric dams. Their answer to extraction was not only refusal. It was cooperative work. It was local government. It was a patient defense of water and territory. Cuetzalan taught me that political research has to notice the practices that keep people alive, not only the systems that harm them.
Roma, Italy
Policy Knowledge In Roma
- Date
- June and July 2025
- Academic Supervision
- Dr. Francesca Astengo, Université de Montréal
- Visits
- Euro Gulf Information Centre and CeSPI
In Roma, under the supervision of Dr. Francesca Astengo from Université de Montréal, I studied how research becomes policy before the public sees the final language. The fieldwork grew out of my Italian and Mediterranean geopolitics class. At the Euro Gulf Information Centre, the discussion centered on Europe Gulf relations and the quiet work of turning regional politics into institutional knowledge.
At CeSPI, Dr. Marco Zupi spoke with us about development research as a practice of judgment. The visit made policy feel less like a document and more like a room where evidence is weighed carefully. The future of migration becomes legible there through institutional choices that deserve to be studied closely.
Guizhou, China
Ethnic Identity And Modernization
- Date
- July 2020
- Field Sites
- Pingtang County. Congjiang. Leishan.
- Communities
- Buyi. Maonan. Miao.
In Guizhou, I studied how minority identity changes when modernization reaches village life through tourism. In Pingtang County, Buyi residents often treated public cultural display with confidence. In Kapu, a Maonan village, people were more careful about what should be shown to visitors and what should remain inside the community.
The Miao fieldwork in Congjiang and Leishan gave the project its central question. Some local leaders saw tourism as a path toward income and recognition. Many residents were more cautious because dress and ritual were not performances to them. They were part of how a person knows who they are.
Read Acting Out Who I Am in Young Scholars Academic Journal Volume 3