The Immigration History Research Center Archives (IHRCA) at the University Libraries announces its 2026 Grant-in-Aid awardees, along with the Immigration History Research Center’s (IHRC) Michael G. Karni Scholarship awardee.

The award programs support travel for researchers so that they may visit the collections in the IHRCA and advance their research. These awards are made 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.

2026 Grant-in-Aid Awardees

Suchismita Banerjee

Suchismita Banerjee is an assistant professor in the Department of English and Communications, Indian River State College, whose project is titled “Reluctant Citizens: Exploring Early and Contemporary Chinese and South Asian Immigrants in the United States.” This will explore the nature of early Asian migration from India and China that took place after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, centering the case of Dr. Bhagat Singh Thind and his fight for American citizenship, because it subverts the notion of whiteness and problematizes race as a category for naturalization.

Karen Sasakura, a master’s student in the Graduate School of Social Sciences, Hitotsubashi University, Japan, is writing “Contesting Refugee Policy and Citizenship in the United States: The Case Study of Hmong and Somali Refugees in Minnesota,” examining the tensions between refugee administration and the process of citizenship acquisition by refugees, with a particular focus on Hmong and Somali communities in the Twin Cities since the 1970s, contributing to immigration and citizenship studies by bringing legal, administrative, and community-based perspectives together into one analysis.

Karen Sasakura

Alice Price is a graduate student at the University of Texas at San Antonio. In “The power of language and education in the Southeast Asian refugee experience,” Price will explore the role of language and education in shaping the experiences of Southeast Asian refugees who settled in the US. Using the newly available Anne Dykstra papers, Price will examine refugee camps as sites of identity formation, survival, and cultural resilience.

Yasmeen Ebada is a doctoral candidate in Communications at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Ebada’s project, “Arab and Arab American Feminism: Between Western Imperialism and Cultural Authenticity,” investigates how women activists and journalists countered the prevailing interventionist foreign policy narratives put forth by the U.S. government, public, and mainstream media from the 1960s to the 1990s.

Dr. Cheryl Yin is an assistant professor of Anthropology at Carleton College. Yin’s project, “The Relationship between Southeast Asian Refugees and Refugee Sponsors,” examines the pivotal, yet largely untold, history of refugee sponsorship following the Refugee Act of 1980, when more than 1 million Southeast Asian refugees resettled in the U.S. Local sponsors, primarily Christian organizations and private American families, were initially required to facilitate the resettlement process. Inspired by Yin’s own family’s resettlement story, along with memories of their sponsors, this project explores the relationships formed during this resettlement.

Alice Price

2026 Karni Scholar

Dr. Julia Devlin is a project leader for the Amigra Reaching Out project at the Textile and Industry Museum in Augsburg/German Museum in Nuremberg, Germany. Her project looks at the thousands of refugees of Baltic origin who resided in the Valka and Fischbach Displaced Persons camps near Nuremberg until the 1950s. Devlin is particularly interested in the relationships among the camp residents and between the various camps, and will explore the cultural connections, such as choral singing, that were established between different displaced persons camps.

Julia Devlin