This oral history project explores how Nigerian secondary schools shape political identity, civic engagement, and national belonging across generations. Through interviews and documentary storytelling, the research reveals that schools function as microcosms of the nation, forming students’ relationships to society, politics, and migration in ways that continue long after graduation.

This research explores why former human traffickers in Indonesia stopped offending. Through interviews with ten ex-traffickers, the study found that marriage and parenthood often triggered moral transformation by creating empathy and shame. The findings suggest trafficking prevention should focus not only on punishment, but also on strengthening families and social bonds.

This research explores the material culture of the Hindu Pushti Marg tradition by tracing the objects used to care for the child deity Krishna. Through ethnographic work in India and the United States, the thesis reveals how sacred worlds are sustained through often-unrecognized labor crossing boundaries of caste, gender, and religion.

The speaker’s archaeological research in Peru reveals that the Moche incorporated Algarrobo trees into human-sacrifice rituals, possibly viewing the tree as an ancestor. Linguistic evidence, myth, and burial patterns suggest deep spiritual ties between people, trees, and memory. The work challenges modern assumptions and reconstructs ancient worldviews.

This research examines the cultural practice of burying umbilical cords in Nigeria’s Middle Belt, a region shaped by conflict and ecological crisis. Unlike Western views that treat the cord as waste, local traditions see land as a living repository of memory and identity, reframing human–land relationships as reciprocal and deeply interconnected.