Dr. Mariangela Mihai is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and WGSS at Western Washington University. She holds a PhD in anthropology and film from Cornell University and has served as a Postdoctoral and a Gender+ Initiative Fellow at Georgetown. With fieldwork experience spanning over a period of 12 years, Dr. Mihai looks at Indigenous resistance, borderland disputes, parastatal violence, as well as migration, refugee, and LGBTQIA+ issues on the India-Bangladesh-Myanmar-China borderlands, "the Balkans,” and the U.S. As a co-founder of Ethnocine, an Impact Filmmaking collective, she engages in collaborative films and grassroots human rights campaigns across transnational borders, addressing refugee, environmental, labor, LGBTQIA+, and healthcare issues. Dr. Mihai's NGO collaborations include the International Rescue Committee, United Way, and the Romanian Association Against AIDS.
Addiction/drugs/drug policy, Ethnic discrimination or persecution, Ex-combatant reintegration, Forced marriage, Gang-related violence/non-state actors, Gender-based violence/domestic violence, Healthcare access/health systems capacity, HIV/AIDS, Journalist persecution, Land tenure disputes, LGBTQ, Likelihood of destitution or homelessness, Mental illness, Political persecution, Prison conditions, Religious discrimination or persecution, Government/state actor persecution, Risk of retaliation, Safe internal relocation, Sexual abuse/assault, Sufficiency of protection, Trafficking, Tribal discrimination or persecution, Violence against children/child abuse
First, I am myself from a refugee family. My father has been a political refugee in England, Germany, France, and Portugal. Thus, I have direct experience of the refugee resettlement system. Second, concomitant with academia, I have also worked with refugee resettlement and refugee related NGOs in the US, such as The International Rescue Committee, United Way, and others. I have taught ESL to political refugees and migrants from South America, Southeast Asia, the “Middle East,” and from numerous African countries experiencing political unrest. With similar refugee populations I have also worked as a youth programming coordinator, high-school curricula tutor, and as a case worker assistant at the IRC Atlanta. Third, I have produced and co-produced several documentary films and Impact campaigns regarding refugee resettlement, human rights issues, and political unrest in collaboration with activists, scholars, and artists from Southeast Asia, the U.S.
• “Utilizing Storytelling to Impact Faculty Attitudes & Beliefs about Gender-Diverse People,” —Interdisciplinary educational project piloted at Georgetown, published in the Journal for Nurse Practitioners (2023).
• I Am A Whisper, My Dear, —Ethnographic documentary on LGBTQIA+ activism in the Southeast Asian borderlands.
• This is not America, Ma’am—Multimedia research project exploring communist-era and contemporary Eastern-European state violence, embodiment, and heritage.
• Nobel Nok Dah—Ethnographic film and higher education curricula offering insight into the lives of Karen refugees from Myanmar (Burma) resettled in central New York.
• TNT Gospel Camp —Ethnographic film providing an in-depth look at one of an extra-judicial gospel camp in Northeast India, housing 2,000 drug and alcohol users, orphans, and persons with disabilities.