Established in 2017 to commemorate the UC Irvine Libraries Southeast Asian Archive’s 30th anniversary, the Southeast Asian Archive (SEAA) Anne Frank Visiting Researcher Award is given annually to a researcher who lives outside of Orange County and is not currently affiliated with UC Irvine. Named in honor of Anne Frank, the archive’s founding librarian who retired in 2007, the $1,000 award is intended to defray the cost of traveling to Irvine, California to conduct hands-on research within the archive.

The endowment fund was established to provide ongoing support for generations of future scholars to visit the SEAA, part of the UC Irvine Libraries Special Collections and Archives. Faculty, students, and independent researchers (including filmmakers, scriptwriters, playwrights, biographers, novelists, and others) are encouraged to apply.

Award Recipients

This year, the Libraries were able to award and support three visiting scholars:

• Richard Lim, a doctoral student in American studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
• Marie-Thérèse Moua-Jasperson, a third-year doctoral student in second language acquisition at University of Wisconsin–Madison
• Yee Thao, a master's student in Asian American studies at UCLA and an incoming PhD candidate in the School of Education at UC Davis

Richard Lim’s research project, “Complicating Coalitions: The Relationship Between Hate Violence, Policing, and Solidarity,” interrogates why increased political participation leads to heightened policing. His work explores cross-racial activists’ efforts and their movements’ engagements with law, specifically evaluating California’s anti-immigrant and “tough on crime” politics, as exemplified by the 1992 Los Angeles Uprisings, and its impact on Asian American and Latinx activists’ approaches to addressing hate violence and policing. 

Marie-Thérèse Moua-Jasperson’s research, “Hmong Writing: A Refugee Journey,” examines Hmong literacy development.

“The Hmong did not have a writing system until 1953, when Western missionaries and linguists in Laos developed the Romanized Popular Alphabet,” explained Moua-Jasperson. “Hmong literacy, defined as the ability to read and write Hmong, is a critical element of the Hmong refugee experience. However, little is known about the early stages of Hmong literacy development and the community’s adoption of writing as a new modality alongside its oral traditions, particularly since this happened during a time of warfare and displacement.”

Her work examines Hmong literacy development through a desire-based framework, which acknowledges the hardships and injustices faced by the Hmong while also emphasizing the aspirations, resilience, knowledge, and creativity that sustain them in the face of adversity.

The documentary project “Belong, Believe, Become: Reimagining Refugeehood and Spaces via Hmong Femme Weavership” by Yee Thao examines how forced migration and diasporic experiences challenge gendered identities, intersecting with race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality. The film focuses on Hmong women, who despite being historically disempowered, disproportionately lead many of the grassroots organizations in California Hmong enclaves. Her work reveals how Hmong “femme weavers” reimagine agency in cultural and political landscapes marked by patriarchal norms by reframing Hmong resistance as rooted in marginalities – centering youth, queer, and femme narratives.

The three fellows will visit UC Irvine in fall 2025 or early 2026 to meet with Anne Frank and complete a day of research. 

To learn more about the Anne Frank Visiting Researcher Award, see the application guidelines and list of previous award recipients.

About the Southeast Asian Archive

Founded in 1987 at UC Irvine Libraries, the SEAA was created to support the documentation and preservation of the history of Southeast Asian diasporic communities, which encompasses the Cambodian, Hmong, Khmer, Laotian, and Vietnamese diasporas. Since 2015, the archive has existed as part of the Libraries’ Orange County and Southeast Asian Archive (OC&SEAA) Center, which supports research on underrepresented groups in Orange County and Southeast Asian American experiences.

For information on SEAA’s collections, see UC Irvine Libraries’ finding aids, which can help guide information search, and related digital collections.