What new ideas, challenges, or other issues have you encountered with regard to your project (this might include data collection, information that contradicts your assumptions or the assertions of others, materials that have enriched your understanding of the topic or led you to change your project, etc.)? How have these ideas or challenges shaped the bigger picture of your research? Has the scope or focus of your topic changed since you began this project? If so, how?

This past week, I visited the Women for Afghan Women’s (WAW) office in Queens, NY. Upon talking to their program director and others who work with the organization, I gained more ideas about the different voices I can have represented through the interviews I will be doing with members of WAW and some of their clients. After talking with Zara from WAW and answering her questions about my project, I thought about how my project would most likely take on a lens of talking with older generations of the Afghan American diaspora. Furthermore, my project will not cover those who are not adults, which leaves a portion of the diaspora unaccounted for. With this understanding, I think that the interviews of my project will mostly focus more on Afghan Americans who came to the US during the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s. Although the interview part of this project will primarily focus on immigrants from this period, I hope to incorporate the broader diaspora of Queens, NY, and the general US Afghan American community into the research paper I am working on, which will be published at the culmination of the research program. Furthermore, during our group’s weekly graduate mentor meeting, we discussed other ways to share our research findings. Thus, I hope to utilize ArcGIS to start mapping places that my interviewees talk about in Afghanistan and in the USA in relation to their migration journeys. Thus, in addition to a research paper, I will also have a visual that is much more digestible and informative to the public about the Afghan American diaspora and experience. 

Where does your research take place--or where is a favorite place to conduct your research? Post a photo!

I spend my time doing research in multiple places. These places include my bedroom desk, Joe’s Coffee on campus, Butler Library, and Women for Afghan Women’s office. Most days, I get up and get to work in my room, especially given the hot temperatures in the past two weeks. I have attached a picture of my desk.