RESEARCH FINDINGS and ACADEMIC INSIGHTS
My research has two connected parts. My graduate capstone, completed at the University of Minnesota, looked at what practices actually help people preserve their family and cultural histories — with a focus on Hmong immigrant narratives, community collaboration, and the role of cultural institutions. Alongside that, my fellowship with the Ramsey County Historical Society and the Center for Hmong Studies focused on local Twin Cities resources and community engagement, and resulted in the guidebook and toolkit you'll find on this site.
Graduate Research Behind the Project
A lot of people want to preserve their family's history but don't know where to start — or assume their photos and documents aren't valuable enough to bother with. The reality is that personal archives matter just as much as anything in a museum. The challenge is that one-on-one help is hard to find, and cost can be a barrier. My research looks at the role that communities, professionals, and institutions can play in making preservation more accessible, and asks: what practices can actually help people do this work?
Learn more about the Hmong Cultural Fellowship
My fellowship was hands-on from the start. I spent the bulk of it digitizing and documenting my own family archive — sorting through photos, documents, and objects while tracking what was actually accessible and affordable. Free and low-cost options mattered to me, so I sought out local organizations, online resources, and set up appointments with archivists and conservators in the Twin Cities who could answer questions I couldn't find answers to elsewhere.
Part of that process meant visiting key community centers to learn about their programming and archives of Hmong culture. That work deepened my understanding of my own culture — the history, folklore, and traditions behind the items I was preserving. It also helped me understand what preservation efforts already exist in the Twin Cities, and where the gaps are.
Every day I was recording, writing, and photographing my process. Out of that work came the guidebook — a resource that went through multiple rounds of revising, editing, and reworking based on feedback from readers. The goal was to make it concise and practical enough that someone with no archiving background could actually use it.
