I am one of the Pandemic Histories Archive project supervisors. My contributions to this project have included training students in ethnography and oral history techniques, assembling materials for them to learn about archives, pandemics, and social justice issues, reviewing and commenting on student work, handling logistical matters related to the project, and meeting with members of the project team. For me, participating in the Pandemic Histories Archive project has been one of the highlights of the past year. I have been inspired by students’ resilience and creativity, and more in touch with how students have been impacted by the cascade of challenges that have impacted so many. I have loved the way that the project builds community among participants and I am honored to have worked with the other members of our leadership team, including Associate Dean Richard Matthew, doctoral students Vivi Goh and Caitlin Benedict, UCI archivists Thuy Vo Dang and Elvia Arroyo-Ramirez, Social Ecology library Liaison Julia Gelfand, and Field Study Director Dmitry Tsukerman.

My research focuses on human security and conservation challenges at the intersection of environmental stress, poverty and violent conflict. I also work on the co-development of visualization tools using big data and local knowledge to provide practical risk management support to communities that are extremely vulnerable to flood events and other disasters. I have done extensive fieldwork in conflict and disaster zones worldwide and have served on several UN peacebuilding missions, including two that I led to Sierra Leone. I am involved in the Pandemic Histories Archive Project because I believe it is important to provide our diverse community of students with practical and versatile research tools that help them to observe and reflect on the unprecedented times they are living through, and then produce materials that can be archived and made available to other people interested in this period of our history.

I provide project organizers and contributors guidance on archiving best practices and work with contributors on donating their materials for preservation in the UCI Libraries Special Collections & Archives. This project is an opportunity to empower students by teaching them to be their own archivist and the importance of documenting the historical moment we are living in. My work so often focuses on events that occurred in the past, so it is exciting to be able to offer help to the UCI community on how to document their experiences living through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Thuy Vo Dang (she/her/hers) is committed to advancing the practice of community-centered archives and foregrounding histories of marginalized communities. She has a Ph.D. in ethnic studies from UC San Diego and is co-author of the book, Vietnamese in Orange County (published in 2015) and also co-author of the forthcoming A People’s Guide to Orange County (2022), a book about the lesser-known places and people whose lives were shaped by struggles for power and belonging in this region. Thuy serves on the board of directors for Arts OC and the Vietnamese American Arts & Letters Association.

Vivianna Goh is a UCI Social Ecology PhD student and TA for this project. Since Fall 2020, Vivianna has assisted with developing the virtual field study site on Canvas and providing students with feedback on their materials. Vivianna is amazed by the resilience of the students participating in this project, and believes that the archive is incredibly important for allowing members of the UCI community to express themselves during the pandemic. She was inspired to create the Pandemic Histories Archive Blog after reading Qianru Li’s blog Drama in Crisis – Pandemic Edition “Jazz Hands”, which shares reflections from Spring 2020 UCI Drama students.

I joined this project in Winter 2021 as a TA in which I assisted in the development of the internship site and provided feedback on student’s work. It’s been a pleasure to interact with students without the need to assign grades and instead, connect with them about their experiences. The students have been extremely grateful for the chance to reflect on the last year and to learn about themselves and others in a different light while having an outlet to talk about current events.  Too often, student’s experiences beyond the classroom are overlooked which gives them the impression that those experiences don’t matter. This archive project has allowed them to tell their stories and understand that their voices matter.