Kong Pheng Pha is assistant professor of gender and women’s studies and Asian American studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research and teaching examines Hmong American experiences in the diaspora, Asian American racial, gender, sexual, and queer formations, and social justice organizing in the U.S. From 2016 to 2023, he was a faculty member in the Department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, where he taught courses, engaged in student-faculty research, and led an international research trip in critical Hmong studies. He is currently completing a book titled Ends of Culture: Transmutations of Belonging in Hmong America. His research and writing has been published in Hmong Studies Journal, Minnesota History, Amerasia, Journal of Asian American Studies, American Quarterly, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, AGITATE! Journal, and American Studies. His community-based participatory action research and creative activity with Hmong American communities and college students have been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation. Pha’s other public-facing work have been published in Hmong Today, Twin Cities Daily Planet, Asian American Organizing Project, Reappropriate, Leader-Telegram, and Aperture Magazine.
Chong Moua teaches Hmong Studies and History at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. Her research interests center around the question of how immigration, race, gender, citizenship, and empire produce discourses of belonging.
Lena Lee was one of the five founders of the HMoob American Studies Committee (HMASC) and advocated for the establishment of a HMoob American Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was also a student researcher with the Our HMoob American College Paj Ntaub team for three years, where they identified factors that influence the HMoob American student experience at UW-Madison. During her time, she helped establish the HMoob American Studies Emphasis under the Asian American Studies Program and presented research findings to various stakeholders across the country. Currently, she is the Office Manager and Event Coordinator with the Office of Academic & Career Success, and recently graduated with her Master’s in Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis
Dr. Mai See Thao is a medical anthropologist with research interests in chronicity, historical trauma, displacement, the refugee body, biopolitics, and care. She also leads two CBPR projects, one examining the intersection of type 2 diabetes and social determinants of health for the Hmong and a community-based and community-led exhibit on Hmong historical trauma and healing in Wisconsin. She brings together the theoretical and applied to demonstrate the importance of knowledge being useful, especially to the communities it comes from. Dr. Thao is currently an Anna Julia Cooper Postdoctoral Fellow and will take on the role of Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Asian American Studies Program in the Fall of 2024. She previously was the Director of Hmong Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, where she created Hmong Studies as a critical race and ethnic studies program that is connected to UWO’s surrounding communities.