The Localized History Project is a New York State funded youth participatory action research project investigating the extent to which AANHPI history is taught in K-12 history classrooms in NY State, and presents youth-driven curriculum alternatives to test-driven curricula. Our project seeks to uplift AANHPI histories local to NY, and provide a sense of connection and belonging for AANHPI youth. We hope our work showcases how youth are critical contributors to knowledge production, research, and history. Thus far through our work we have established youth action boards in New York City, Westchester, and Long Island, attended a Storytelling Retreat, and established a pilot survey. You can read more about our research in our recent article entitled,“Localized Histories and Pedagogical Revolutions: Youth Driven Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander History Curriculum in New York State.” Follow us @LocalizedHistory.

If you would like to contact us with ideas for projects, suggestions for our website, or any other questions, please do so by emailing ssunderram[@]gradcenter.cuny[.edu].

Meet the Youth Researchers


Clarissa Kunizaki

Clarissa Kunizaki is a sixteen-year-old rising senior at Brooklyn Technical High School. She has been a member of the Leadership Team for the Localized History Project since its founding. Her current research focuses on uplifting stories of solidarity in NYC’s Community Control movement and racial coalition-building in the 1960s. 


Amy Feng

Amy Feng is a 17-year-old rising freshman at the University of California, Berkeley. She has been a member of the Leadership Team for the Localized History Project for 2 years. Her research focuses on uplifting stories of solidarity between the Asian community and other minorities, as well as deep-diving into specific events of Asian American history on United States soil.


Navipa Zaman

Navipa Zaman is a sophomore at Baruch College studying Political Science. Her work as a member of the Leadership Team for the Localized History Project at AAARI focuses on archival work and oral storytelling. Currently, Navipa is working on elevating the voices of immigrant women in the Bangladeshi-American diaspora in New York City.


Izzah Amir

Izzah Amir is currently a rising junior and aspiring poet studying Creative Writing and Studio Art. She is an avid environmentalist, artist, and storyteller. As a Pakistani-American, she is currently researching the efforts of single South Asian women who have immigrated to Bensonhurst.


Nico Brennar

Nico Brenner is a 16 year old Junior at Scarsdale High School in Westchester, New York. He recently joined the Localized History Project in the fall of 2024 as a member of the Youth Action Board. Initially inspired by his experience recording oral histories with his grandmother, Nico is passionate about amplifying Asian American voices and hopes to make a meaningful impact through community based storytelling.


Angie Choe

Angie is an upcoming third-year undergraduate student double majoring in Business Management and Art History, and pursuing a Commendation in Advanced Language Studies (CALS) certificate in Chinese. Her interests in researching the Korean diaspora and archival research led her to joining the Localized History Project. 


Brian Chen

Brian Chen is an undergraduate student at Stony Brook University studying Political Science and Writing & Rhetoric. He became a member of YAB in 2024 after learning the opportunities it provided to learn Asian American history and help shape a more inclusive curriculum for New York State. Brian plans to stay in the city for law school and also pursue teaching.


Violet Kim

Violet Kim is a seventeen year-old rising senior from Great Neck North High School and a member of the Youth Leadership Team for the Localized History Project. She is researching the history of Asian immigration in her town and aims to foster cultural understanding, and advocate for the inclusion of Asian American history in NYS school curricula. At this moment, Violet is continuing her research of Asian immigration in the suburban context.


Karla Liu

Karla Liu is a 20-year-old BA/MA student at Stony Brook University studying history and Asian-Asian American studies (AAAS). She combines her historical knowledge, upkeep with current events, and artistic mediums to create a comic reflecting Asian-American attitudes about gentrification in Manhattan’s Chinatown.


Soriya Potter

Soriya Potter is a Khmer American originally from Queens, New York. Currently a rising college freshman, his research focuses on Cambodian communities that came to the U.S. following the Khmer Rouge regime. He has been a part of the AAARI-CUNY Youth Action Board since its inception.


Ravi Vora

Ravi Vora is a rising senior at Scarsdale High School. He has been a member of the Leadership Board at the Localized History Project since September of his junior year. During his time at the project he has co-authored research papers, collected data, and explored early radical South Asian American political activism.


Mohammed Fahim

Mohammed Fahim was born and raised in New York City and is currently a junior at Hunter College, majoring in Neuroscience and Economics. 

Meet the Adult Allies

Shreya Sunderram

Shreya is the Adult Ally/Director of the Localized History Project, and is a PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center in the Urban Education program. Her work studies the ways in which the history classroom and other sites of knowledge production uphold colonial violence, and how youth resistance and worldbuilding is central to the creation of truthful and just learning spaces. In additional to LHP, her ‘Worldbuilding Pedagogies’ project considers speculative history and critical game based learning strategies as ways to teach history in both content revolutionary and pedagogically revolutionary ways that is anti-colonial and solidarity-oriented. Her dissertation, entitled “Anchoring Ourselves in History: South Asian Diasporic Movements of Study and Struggle,” combines historical archival research with youth participatory action research. In the Fall of 2025, she will be a Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University’s Catalysts of Decolonisation Lab.

Yung-Yi Diana Pan

Yung-Yi Diana Pan wears many hats including PI on the Localized History Project (AAARI-CUNY), Director of the American Studies Program, and Associate Professor of Sociology at City University of New York, Brooklyn College. She is also affiliated with the sociology department at the The Graduate Center. Diana's work broadly focus on the experiences of nonwhites in white spaces. Her first book, Incidental Racialization (Temple University Press, 2017), examines how Asian American and Latinx law students are racialized as a part of their professional socialization. Extending that project, Diana's current research interrogates how race matters for professionals with a focus on doctors, lawyers, and professors. She is also in the nascent stages of a collaborative project with her sister, a talented tattoo artist, that explores addiction recovery and family.Diana regularly teaches theory, methods, and race and ethnicity courses. She formerly served in the following leadership roles at CUNY and Brooklyn College: Interim Executive Director of the Asian American/Asian Research Institute (AAARI) - CUNY; Faculty Associate Dean for the School of Humanities and Social Sciences - Brooklyn College, Undergraduate Deputy Chair for the Department of Sociology - Brooklyn College, and co-chair of the Asian American Faculty and Staff Association - Brooklyn College.

Eva Schmidt

Eva Schmidt is the Assitant Director of the Localized History Project, and a recent graduate of the CUNY BA program at Hunter College/CUNY, studying mixed methods research and Asian American studies. Originally from Arizona, with a background in the performing arts, she continually looks for ways to blend and find connections within her varied interests. Inspired by her personal experiences, she seeks to contribute to the field in a meaningful and representative way where voices, often marginalized and underrepresented, are amplified and celebrated.

Tui Katoanga

Tui is a rising sophomore at Stony Brook, pursuing majors in Economics and Applied Math/Stat, and a Site Director at LHP. He originally hails from Roosevelt Island, which has a small but tight-knit Pacific Islander community. Tui joined LHP because of his passion for learning about Asian American history and for sharing Pacific Islander culture. At Stony Brook, he also writes News and Opinion pieces for the Stony Brook Press. In the future, he hopes to research the economics of illicit markets, looking at the illicit drug market in Fiji as a case study. In his freetime, he enjoys watching comedy shows (The Golden Girls and Insecure are his favorites), listening to Charli XCX and Caroline Polachek, reading, and trying out new restaurants with his family and friends.

Jake Xie

Jake Xie is a graduate student studying mental health counseling; he is a Site Director for LHP. Raised in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, which hosts one of New York City’s largest Chinatowns, Jake places great importance on preserving cultural heritage through oral history. As a second-generation Chinese-American, Jake is committed to uncovering and showcasing the lived experiences of the AANHPI community. His overarching aim is to make meaningful contributions to a more inclusive and rich classroom curriculum in New York State.