The Immigration History Research Center Archives (IHRCA) at the University of Minnesota Libraries announces its 2024 Grant-in-Aid awardees, and the Immigration History Research Center’s Michael G. Karni Scholarship awardee.

These award programs support travel so that researchers may visit the collections in the IHRCA and advance their research. Awards are available through co-sponsorship from the IHRC.

Congratulations to all! Please watch for future blog posts by these scholars, or announcements about Research-in-Progress talks.

2024 Grant-in-Aid Awardees

Raluca Rogoveanu

Rogoveanu’s project title is American Strategies and Romanian Emotions in the Early 20th Century United States: The Creation of the Union and League of Romanian American Societies.

This research hopes to generate some intellectual insight into the cultural and political logic of the Romanian communities in the United States in the first three decades of the 20th century, through a scholarly inquiry into the political, social, and cultural representations of the Romanian ethnicity in the United States.

This project focuses on a critical period in the configuration of the field of communication and interaction meant to build and sustain Romanian ethnic collectivities within the American context. It is the period delineated by the emergence of the first local-based fraternal societies, mutual benefit societies and cultural societies, their first attempt to coalesce in trans-state clusters, up to the coming into being of the first national network of Romanian ethnic organizations, The Union and League of Romanian American Societies.

Dr. Rogoveanu is Associate Professor, Ovidius University, Constanta, Romania.

Olatunde Taiwo

Taiwo’s project, Unemployment, Power-Relations, and Servility in Deportee-Letters Connecting British-Nigeria and the USA, 1907-1960, addresses gaps in the understanding of deportation between Nigeria and the USA from 1907 to 1960. 

His project examines how ideas of communism, servility, and labor circulated through these deportations and were mobilized by enforcers and deportees. It uses records from the IHRCA and National Archives (Ibadan, Nigeria) to argue that exchanges of these ideas profoundly shaped notions of labor recruitment in both countries during this period.

Mr. Taiwo is affiliated with the University of Ghana and the Olabisi Onabanjo University, Nigeria. 

Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso

Yacob-Haliso’s project title is African Identities, Global Politics, and the Return of Refugee Women to Postconflict Liberia. 

When the 14-year-long Liberian civil war ended in 2003, over 250,000 displaced persons from across West Africa returned to a war-ravaged country, a

weak national government, and the large presence of international peacekeepers, organizations, and non-governmental organizations. 

This research analyzes war and displacement dynamics, refugee narratives and experiences, women’s intersectionalities, and the policies and actions of various government and international agencies to demonstrate the imbricated impacts of identities and postconflict power on peacebuilding outcomes for women, communities, and the nation. 

These have serious implications not only for women’s postconflict reintegration, but also for peace and peacebuilding in Liberia and the West African sub-region, with broader lessons to be drawn for other African states.

Dr. Yacob-Haliso is Associate Professor of African and African American Studies, Brandeis University. 

Elizabeth Zanoni

Zanoni’s project, Now Boarding: Commercial Airlines and the Construction of a Migrant Nation during the Cold War, explores how the aviation industry changed the nation demographically, as the major transporter of immigrants and refugees to the USA; legally, in collaboration and contestation with the federal government, and the Immigration and Nationalization Service specifically; and culturally, as a leading postwar powerhouse in the realms of taste, travel, and tourism.

Dr. Zanoni is Associate Professor of History, Department of History, Old Dominion University.

2024 Karni Scholar

Maarja Merivoo-Parro

Merivoo-Parro’s project, Early 20th Century Finnish-Estonian Connections on US Soil, looks at the history of popular diplomacy and political cooperation between Finns and Estonians during the early years of the 20th century before the rise of the Soviet Union changed the political landscape. 

Because of their cultural and linguistic proximity, as well as similar historical experiences in their home countries, the new lived experiences of Finns and Estonians in the United States might have prompted similar value conflicts, brought about overlapping aspirations and translated into joint action. 

Using various Finnish and Estonian collections within IHRCA, this research will explore when, where, how, and why collaborations came to be and how they informed the subsequent history. 

Dr. Merivoo-Parro obtained her PhD from Tallinn University and is currently a radio and tv host at Estonian Public Broadcasting.