Event: Building in Community: the Refugee Material Culture Initiative

The Refugee Material Culture Initiative (RMCI) is a community-engaged digital humanities project that rethinks how refugee histories are preserved and shared. Instead of relying on institutions to define what matters, RMCI works with refugee communities to decide which objects are preserved, how their stories are told, and how they are made accessible through digital surrogates, virtual exhibits, and educational resources.

This talk introduces RMCI through its first partnership with the Vietnamese Heritage Museum in Westminster, California, and shows how institutional resources—technology, expertise, and infrastructure—can be leveraged to support community-led preservation and storytelling. The presentation will also feature brief reflections from three artifact donors—Nguyễn Thanh Thủy, Nguyên Chí Long, and Lê Trị—who will speak about their objects and the experience of seeing their histories digitally preserved.

Kelly Nguyen
Assistant Professor
Classics