Stanford Humanities Center
A PhD candidate in Modern Thought and Literature, she co-chairs the SHC's Fiber Optics Research Workshop.
Stanford PhD candidate Michelle Ha was recently awarded one of the forty-five Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowships for 2025. The program supports doctoral students in the humanities and social sciences as they pursue innovative approaches to dissertation research, including new methodologies, formats, and collaborations with community partners beyond the academy. ACLS launched the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship Program in 2023 to advance change in humanistic scholarship by recognizing emerging scholars who take risks in the modes, methods, and subjects of their research.
Ha is a PhD candidate in Modern Thought and Literature. She began studying histories of plant fiber materials to disentangle conflicting assertions of the Korea-Mexico migration’s racial and colonial dimensions within existing scholarship. She co-chairs the Humanities Center's Research Workshop Fiber Optics: Plant Fiber Materials and Media.
Her project, titled Fiber Optics: Henequén Classification and its Consequences, incorporates hands-on intensive training in traditional methods of cellulosic fiber production to illuminate the history of Korean indentureship on Mexican agave fiber plantations in the early twentieth century.
Read More
Share
