Integrative medicine is a practice that incorporates elements of alternative medicine into conventional ways of treating and diagnosing patients. Data collected consisted of semi-structured interviews in which participants were asked about their experience practicing integrative medicine. Participants either work or have trained at one primary integrative medicine clinic at a major research university in the United States that primarily focuses on one type of alternative medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). My research demonstrates that physicians who practice integrative medicine value what they call a “whole person” approach to health and place an emphasis on balance, prevention, and patient agency when treating patients. This project also explores how these healthcare professionals blend practices and ideologies from Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and conventional Western medicine and how TCM can fit in a Western healthcare model.

My research project analyzes queer Asian American female college students' experiences on mediated dating contexts, exploring the specific mechanisms in which, on the basis of their intersectional identities, these young women navigate through certain racialized dynamics of intimacy and desirability on dating apps, such as Hinge. Dominant online racialized discourses of desirability tend to limit the women's agencies through either hypervisibility through fetishization, or invisibility through censorship and exclusion. Therefore, in a hypermediatized society in which dating apps serve to facilitate social relationships and self-exploration, there raises questions as to specifically how young queer Asian American women navigate these racialized and gendered dynamics of desirability/intimacy within their age group on dating apps; Do these dynamics of desirability/intimacy compel these women into a constant negotiation of their identity presentation? This project's methods include an analysis of qualitative interviews from queer Asian American female UCLA students and their experiences on Hinge, emphasizing how they maneuver against racialized desirability through selective disclosure/manipulation of their online identity presentation. The research's results conclude that queer Asian American women in college settings utilize a range of certain tactics to present themselves in a way that combats, navigates, and/or abides by racialized mediated dynamics of desirability and intimacy.

My research creative project will focus on conducting social science research on the relevance of queer nightlife in Los Angeles as well as interviews with queer UCLA students regarding their early experiences with queer nightlife as young queer people. Ultimately at the end of this research project I intend to produce a short video of roughly 5 to 10 minutes in length that includes video footage from my student interviews and footage of queer nightlife clubs, bars, and events throughout Los Angeles. My research is being driven by the question of how and why do queer college students engage with queer nightlife and how do their experiences attest to the presence or lack thereof of spaces of queer intersectionality in Los Angeles? In order to address this question, I will be researching the relevance of third spaces to community building, the history of queer nightlife in Los Angeles, and how culture is cultivated through nightlife, particualry within the context of queer communities. Moreover, I will be supplementing my research with interviews that I conduct with queer students at UCLA about their first time going out to gay bars and engaging with queer nightlife. I hope to interview approximately 10 students and take clips from these interview sessions to put in my film and add an element of storytelling.

Immigration is a topic that often floats throughout public consciousness, questions about who is immigrating and why are constantly discussed in many different media platforms. However, a specific group of migrants that receive little to no thought are LGBTQ+ migrants who travel to the United States in order to escape violent discrimination and persecution in their home countries. This project aims to highlight the urgent need for legal asylum in the United States for LGBTQ+ individuals fleeing persecution and violence in Mexico and Guatemala, as well as the barriers LGBTQ+ individuals face in the process of applying for asylum. This project uses a literature review of Human Rights reports and immigration-based scholarly articles, accessed through the UCLA Library, to examine the barriers that LGBTQ+ Latines face in seeking asylum and the dangers they face in their home countries that force them to flee. I will primarily investigate barriers to asylum and how these barriers leave lasting negative mental, physical, and financial repercussions on LGBTQ+ Latines. I further desire to explore why mainstream news outlets rarely highlight the struggle LGBTQ+ Latines face in their journey to asylum. My findings will shed light on the often ignored plight of LGBTQ+ Latines to raise awareness about this issue, which will hopefully lead to the breaking down of barriers surrounding asylum and an overall bettering of living conditions for LGBTQ+ Latines.

Claims of racial homogenization, folklorization, and persecution have historically been obstacles for Indigenous peoples in El Salvador (Tilley 2005). In response to these challenges, they sustain resilience in ways that can be understood through Indigenous Psychologies (Ciofalo et al. 2021). This framework implies that paradigms of social and emotional well-being emphasize that strengthening connections to culture is essential for the flourishing of Indigenous individuals, families, and communities (Ciofalo et al. 2021). Based in ethnographic research in western El Salvador, this theory becomes embodied through the appropriation of colonial religious structures called cofradías by two Nawat-Pipil communities. In this paper, I argue that in the towns of Izalco and Cuisnahuat, cofradías have served—and continue to serve—as a means by which identity and communal ties are reinforced, and self-determination as well as resilience is cultivated. Studying the dynamics between colonial structures in Indigenous communities can provide insight into how settler-colonial nations continue to reinforce systems of oppression.