Fall 2025 C.V. Starr Fund for A/P/A Research Awardees

Baomi Phung (PhD student, NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing) will conduct research for the project, “Grounded Theory Study on Emotional Safety During Perinatal Care Interactions among South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Pacific Islander Childbearing Women and People in the United States.” This interpretive qualitative study uses community- and arts-based research methods (community advisory council and art journaling) to explore what feeling safe during care in pregnancy, labor and birth, and after birth means to South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Pacific Islander childbearing people. Understanding what safety feels and looks like in care can inform ways to improve perinatal care delivery and maternal health outcomes among South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Pacific Islander childbearing women and people.

Toby Wu (PhD student, NYU Steinhardt) will present his paper, “Heritage Months as Multiracial Literacy Projects: Asian American Elementary Teachers’ Approaches to AANHPI Heritage Month” at the American Educational Studies Association Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The paper examines fourteen Asian American elementary teachers’ approaches and meaning-making around their observances of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month. It details how the heritage month functions as a multiracial literacy project, in which teachers cultivated young children’s racial literacies around their own and other people’s identities.