This digital humanities capstone project builds upon my senior thesis “An Analysis of Western Perspectives on the Khmer Republic, 1970-2023”. The thesis examined Western scholarly works related to the escalating events that enabled the Khmer Rouge’s rise in Cambodia, revealing biases in how the events leading up to the Cambodian Genocide were portrayed. This research demonstrated that the roots of the Cambodian genocide stretched back years before the Khmer Rouge came to power, fueled by political instability and civil war. Through an interactive digital timeline, this project synthesizes primary and secondary sources across media reports, government records, and academic analysis, to name a few, to visually display the narratives and divergences in Western scholar’s perspectives. My main research question has changed from the start of this project, today resulting in: How can a digital timeline effectively showcase the divergences in Western scholars’ portrayal of events during the Lon Nol Era, that preceded the Cambodian Genocide? Over the past two semesters, I have been building a website to illustrate the history leading up to the Khmer Rouge regime. The website features an interactive timeline and globe, based on latitude and longitude points. It features three interlinking sections tracking: 1) Scholarly Works, 2) Surrounding World Events, and 3) The Lon Nol Era and Cambodian Genocide. By revealing biases and gaps through a visual model, it can reveal blind spots or skewed narratives. It can also track interconnections, and observe how scholarly interpretations evolved to provide context for the escalating political instability to demonstrate the Khmer Rouge’s rise in power. By uniquely challenging oversimplified narratives, this project can provide a more contextual understanding of how Western perspectives shaped understanding of the Cambodian Genocide.

The European Union's (EU) New Pact on Migration and Asylum demonstrates the EU’s securitizing behavior towards migration. Current discussion surrounding the measures prevalent within the New Pact is primarily focused on the EU’s severity towards managing migration flows. While there has been a consensus on the inherent flaws of these extreme measures, previous research has taken the rationale behind the EU’s decisions for granted. The lack of clarification on the EU’s logic leads to a failure to explain why the EU continues to push this New Pact despite both the flaws present within it and the opposition to the pact by African nations directly affected by it. To illustrate the EU’s reasoning, I utilize discourse analysis of semantic structures and the use of metaphors in seven speeches made by key European Commission members on the New Pact. This process finds and measures the salience of the Commission members' ideations of an EU “home” that needs to be defended from threats to collective identity. These findings are supplemented by content analysis of European Newspapers to find underlying economic and political factors that also explain the EU’s stubbornness on the New Pact. The content analysis of articles will demonstrate why ontological insecurity has emerged as a problem now. My findings indicate that the European Commission members' refusal to adjust the New Pact is caused by a break in the psychological anchors that make people feel secure. Specifically, Commission members have been found to feel ontologically insecure when governing migration. They demonstrate the belief that migration flows are a threat to the EU’s collective identity and the idea of an EU “home.” To prevent a supposed deterioration of the EU “home” harsh policies such as the New Pact are passed to stem supposedly threatening migration flows.

This project focuses on the redesign of a faculty research website with the objective of enhancing the site’s user experience. The project documents the history of Egyptology in the late 19th and early 20th century, through the lens of unpublished personal archives. The target audience includes scholars working in the discipline of Egyptology, students within the Middle Eastern Languages and Culture department at the University of Washington (UW), and the general public, for whom survey research will be conducted. The research methodology takes a multi-faceted approach, incorporating contextual inquiry-based interviews to observe user interactions with prototype designs. Additionally, in-depth interviews will be conducted with Middle Eastern Languages and Culture professors, and independent scholars, to gather insights on the presentation of the website. The survey research gathers feedback from UW students, gauging their preferences, expectations, and challenges when interacting with Egyptology-related online resources. Through contextual inquiry-based interviews, the project aims to identify user behaviors, allowing for the development of user-centric design solutions. The involvement of Middle Eastern Studies professors in interviews adds an academic perspective, enriching the redesign process with expert insights. The redesign process will address identified user needs and preferences, streamlining navigation, and optimizing content presentation. The redesign process will prioritize fulfilling the requirements and needs that we find through our user experience research. Iterative prototyping allows for user feedback to be continuously integrated, ensuring the final design aligns with the expectations and requirements of the target audience. By combining survey research, contextual inquiry-based interviews, and expert insights from Middle Eastern Studies professors, this project aspires to create a more engaging and user-friendly Egyptology website. The outcomes of this redesign endeavor aim to contribute significantly to the improvement of academic online resources, fostering a seamless and enriching learning experience for students in the Near and Middle Eastern Studies department at the University of Washington.

This paper seeks to find and explain the intersection between the Irish War for Independence (1919-1921) and Irish Rebel Music recorded between 1960 and 2017. Ireland gained independence from the British Empire in 1921, but the bitterness between the two nations remained. That tension became more prevalent in the 1960s and continued for the decades to come. Those decades became a time for Irish musicians to flourish. For the Irish, using music in a political sense is nothing new. Music has always played a large part in Irish society. Throughout the eight hundred years of oppression from the British Empire, the Irish always continued to play on. This paper examines the lyrics of Irish rebel music recorded between 1960 and 2017 that reflect the events of the Irish War for Independence and the lasting effects the war had on Irish society. The question driving this research is how Irish rebel music, between 1960 and 2017 memorializes the Irish War for Independence. By comparing the literature surrounding the War for Independence and Irish Music, this paper argues that the intersection between the events of the Irish War for Independence (1919-1921) and Irish rebel music (recorded between 1960 and 2017) reveals the major influence of music within Irish society in the late twentieth century. Irish musicians used music and lyrics not only to fight the British Empire but to also build a proud and strong nation.

In response to the nuclear discharge incident on 21st August 2023 from the Fukushima nuclear reactors into the Pacific Ocean, Japan found itself at the forefront of a renewed global discourse on nuclear energy policy again post the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accident. The consequential surge in antinuclear sentiment, particularly noteworthy within the East Asia region, serves as the impetus for this research, which seeks to meticulously analyze the potential impact of such sentiment on the public's perception of Japan's nuclear energy policy. This research adopts Akhiro Ogawa's conceptual framework of "anti-nuclear citizen" to scrutinize its influence on the youth demographic, and whether or not the identity influences their attitude towards Japan's current pro-nuclear policy. To ascertain empirical data, the survey method is employed to measure college youth’s sense of precarity, political involvement, and conscientiousness, serving as indicators of one’s alignment with the antinuclear citizen identity. The survey targets undergraduate Japanese exchange students and domestic students who are interested in Japanese studies at the University of Washington and undergraduate students in Japan and aims to delineate the nuanced correlations between antinuclear citizenship and specific policy perceptions. Recognizing the survey’s limitation of snowball sampling predicts a collective behavior that may not be representative of the general population, the study acknowledges potential biases and would like to serve as evidence to elucidate the presence or absence of “antinuclear citizens” within the defined focus group. Furthermore, the survey results are anticipated to delve into the rationales behind certain policy perceptions: generally anti-nuclear or pro-nuclear, leveraging participants' international experiences to augment the evidential support for the application of Ogawa's "antinuclear citizen" ideology. By analyzing the attitudes of the surveyed population toward Japan's nuclear policies, this research aspires to contribute to the conversation of the complex interplay between antinuclear sentiment, identity, and policy perceptions.

In the period of 1996-2000, within the greater context of the Peruvian internal conflict, a forced sterilization regime affected over 300,000 people, the majority of which were indigenous women. The program operated under the guise of promoting maternal healthcare within indigenous and impoverished communities and went largely unnoticed by the greater public both internationally and within Peru. The Quipu project (2017) was established as a way to reconcile with the notion that such sterilizations were left out of the state funded truth and reconciliation process. The project's unique transmedia approach created a database led by women who were forcibly sterilized, allowing them to simply call a telephone line that would record their stories and publish directly on a website. This truth telling and testimonial regime is remarkable in several ways as an approach for truth and reconciliation, in that its approach specifically mimics cosmological and community networks in a digital realm. This study posits that Andean women engage with the Quipu Project’s truth-telling regime to reclaim their identities as indigenous women, mothers, and community members as was disrupted by sterilization. Through a rhetorical examination of testimonials, I analyze the impact of sterilization and subsequent involvement in the project on community relationships, identity, spiritual beliefs, and calls for justice. Additionally, through first-hand interviews with Quipu Project researchers, I draw specific insights into the development of the project. This research develops a vital understanding of testimonial processes in the face of traumatic events, especially in the context of failed statewide policies and reconciliation efforts.