Cultural Sensitivity and Community-Engaged Research

Many of us do the work we do because we are invested in productively challenging the status quo. This includes forging space to uplift and centre the voices, experiences and expertise of racialized communities.
Through the contributions of special guest speakers and audience members, this webinar strives to cultivate a collective toolkit for culturally sensitive community engaged research. This webinar is moderated by Jackie Wong.

Y Vy Truong is a second-generation Vietnamese settler residing and working on the lands of the three title-holding nations: xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), skx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlílwətaʔ/sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh), as well as the lands of the Qiqéyt (Qayqyat) First Nations. She is the Community and Public Engagement Coordinator of Bảo Vệ Collective, which she co-founded with her two friends and colleagues, Mimi Nguyen and Kathy Thai. When she isn’t reciting speaking notes before a discussion panel or stewing over her diasporic angst, Y Vy enjoys reading zines and independent art books that inspire new cultural narratives on identity and history. Passionate about information justice, digital literacy, and community centred research, she is currently pursuing her Masters of Library and Information Sciences (MLIS) at the University of British Columbia (UBC). She hopes to deepen her research on topics that centre the experiences of racialized immigrant communities and digital equity.

Mimi Nguyen's history with the diasporas has consistently pulled her into community work that’s been geared towards what she has later learned to be reconciliation with intergenerational trauma. After being heavily involved in previous Vietnamese Youth Organizations, she expanded her work to visual storytelling where one of her film projects about the fraught political identities in Vietnamese diasporic communities, created with friend and colleague Kathy Thai, was featured locally at VAFF and internationally at the Vietnamese Film Festival in LA. While navigating through the creative world in film and marketing, she has worked as a Community Consultant on behalf of the City of Vancouver to facilitate by-law changes for equitable outcomes. Now she is the COVID-19 Project Lead at Bao Ve Collective, working alongside co-founders Kathy Thai and Y Vy Truong.

kathy thai is a word-juggling colour wizard. kathy is also a second-generation Vietnamese person, who resides and works where their parents took refuge: on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples – xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh), and Qiqéyt (Qayqayt) First Nations. To clarify, kathy's work has always, in one way or another, involved the written and/or spoken word as well as the aesthetics that frame and complement them. Whether they're focusing their lens on an oral history project, designing a community publication, or, in the case of Bảo Vệ Collective, specializing in Design and Communications and working as a co-founder with Mimi Nguyen and Y Vy Truong, kathy works with inclusion and community in mind.