Current Research Interests

 Though I am not currently in a formal school program, there are still many areas related to my work which I would find interesting to research and hope study further in the future:

• One of the first of these is simply to better understand about the process of adaptation and acculturation which refugees face and how an understanding of that process can inform the orientation provided to them in the US and overseas.  I see evidence of this every day in my work, and I had the chance to expand my perspective even more with the opportunity to travel to Kenya in August 2003 where I visited several refugee areas and see the overseas orientation/training process first hand.  A report of my trip can be found here. Part of this interest also revolves around studying how refugees rely on networks of family and friends to succeed in a new environment, themes similar to those explored in my master's thesis on community development and migration.
  
• Another interest is in how government bureaucracies often make assumptions about family structures that may be counter to the cultural realities of those individuals they affect.  One interesting article related to this topic which I have come across is describes how, despite an emphasis on extended families, the bureaucratic structure in New Zealand vis-a-vis Samoan immigrants still contains assumptions about the workings of family interaction and information exchange that come from a more Western model. I find this to be very true with refugees as well. Government programs often contain expectations of how information is shared or how monies are distributed in a family which run contrary to the actual practice. I would like to explore this idea more and examine how case managers' jobs can be bettered by making them aware of these divergences.
  
• Finally, I am interested in learning more about the historical and cultural traditions of people which I come across in my work such as those from Somalia, Central Africa, Burma, Russia, and Bosnia.  This includes a look at their past as well as the changes that have been brought about by the conflicts within their countries

These and other research topics remain of great interest to me and will probably continue to grow and change overtime.  I hope that they will form the basis of doctoral research at some point in the future as well.