Ma Vang

2019 Hellman Fellow

mvang53@ucmerced.edu

Assistant Professor, History & Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
UC Merced

Project Title: Refugee Care: Stories to Bridge Community and Institutions

Project Description: Ma Vang is an Assistant Professor and Chair of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Merced. Her interdisciplinary research advances a feminist refugee critique of secrets, national history, and knowledge production. She specializes in critical Hmong Studies and examines how Hmong have been racialized through their history of involvement in the U.S. “secret war” in Laos. Her book manuscript examines how secrecy structures both official knowledge and refugee epistemologies about war and migration. She is the co-editor of Claiming Place: On the Agency of Hmong Women (University of Minnesota Press, 2016), and her writings have been published in positions: asia critique and MELUS. She has received several awards including the Ford Dissertation Fellowship, the UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship, and the UC Multicampus Research grant to establish the Critical Refugee Studies consortium. She is a founding member of the Critical Refugee Studies Collective and co-editor of the Collective’s website. She is also actively engaged with community organizations such as the Hmongstory 40 Project and the Southeast Asian American Professionals Association.