Student Stories

The Indonesian Cultural Night (ICN) 2025, hosted by the Indonesian Students Association at the University of Michigan (ISA-UM) was truly a night to remember.

On Monday, August 26th, the first day of fall classes, the University of Michigan campus buzzed with excitement.

"Where do I belong?" This question lingered in my mind long after my conversations with Sisi, a 21-year-old Chinese-Spanish student at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF).

My research addresses barriers to accessing treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD) among women in Punjab, India.

My name is Qihao Liang, and I’m a rising senior in Sociology in the Honors Program. I am deeply grateful for the U-M Library Student Mini Grant, which supported my May 8 to 23, 2025 fieldwork in Taiwan for my honors thesis on investment and education migration between Mainland China and Taiwan since 2008. I also want to thank Dr. Liangyu Fu, Director of the Asia Library, whose research guidance, fieldwork planning, and safety check-ins made this work possible. Writing in mid-August, I see how being on the ground in Taiwan reshaped my project; embodiment became tangible (what Ruth Behar calls “the vulnerable observer”), bringing emotional resonance and my own researcher subjectivity into view. Stepping onto the island as a citizen of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) with relatives separated across the Strait, I learned that self-exposure, the experience of being scrutinized and scrutinizing, and the slow time of fieldwork with participants—walking, eating, talking, getting lost—led me and, I hope, my readers to places that Zoom calls, archives, and scraping Instagram, Xiaohongshu, or Threads cannot reach.

Reflections by Michigan Library Scholars intern Ayat Tolba on her 2025 project, which explored the experiences of first-generation international students and their engagement with U-M Library spaces, services, and resources.

Vivian, a first-generation college student at U-M, reflects on her Michigan Library Scholars internship exploring first-gen international students' experiences at the Library. She contributed to research, interviews, and analysis, gained skills in tech and design, and found meaning in community impact. The project deepened her commitment to inclusion, accessibility, and building empathetic systems in education.

Julian Creutz reflects on his second year as a Michigan Library Scholar for the Borderless Seed Stories project.

Reflections by Michigan Library Scholars intern Najmul Ritu on her 2025 project, which explored the experiences of first-generation international students and their engagement with U-M Library spaces, services, and resources.

"where violence flows" was a collaborative zine project during Okyoung Noh's thesis exhibition "In Flow". With the help of two other artists, Kyunghee Kim and Matt Dhillon, "where violence flows" reflects on family, grief, and U.S. imperialism.