Dr. Wan Shun Eva Lam
Associate Professor
School of Education & Social Policy
Northwestern University
Eva is an associate professor at the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. Her research is inspired by many young people who hail from different parts of the world, and her journey in academic communities of literacy educators, scholars, applied linguists, and colleagues in the learning sciences. She works with young people to explore their digital and multilingual literacies in transnational cultural and political contexts, as well as educational designs that promote an expansive view of youths’ migration experiences to support learning and development.
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​My family’s diaspora and migration experiences have spanned multiple places including China, Vietnam, Macau, Hong Kong, and the U.S. Throughout my childhood and teenage years in Hong Kong and Macau, we were aware that we might move to the U.S. for family reunification with my mother’s relatives who were exiles during the Vietnam War. That period was also a time of political change with the impending reversion of Hong Kong from a dependent territory of the United Kingdom to a special administrative region of China in 1997. Since then, many of my family members have lived across the U.S. and Hong Kong, growing our transnational ties and relationships and living through political revolutions within and across countries. I was a student in community college and state universities in the U.S. and later a teacher of English as a second language and bilingual biology working with immigrant and multilingual youth and adults. These experiences have informed my research interests in the generative power of literacy practices and learning that bring students’ linguistic, cultural, diaspora, and political funds of knowledge into the classroom and support youth in learning with each other across difference.
Dr. Patricia Minegishi Delacruz
Patti is an English and reading teacher at Evanston Township High School. She has been a public school educator for over ten years. She currently teaches Transdisciplinary Science and Sophomore English. She is a faculty co-sponsor of the Asian Heritage Alliance and Palestinian Solidarity Club. Patti’s research interests include Third Spaces, students’ intersectional identities across chronotopes, migration storytelling, and transdisciplinary learning.
Patti is a first-generation American child of a Korean immigrant mother and a Japanese immigrant father. Patti was born in Chicago and raised across the Chicagoland area. She is a product of Illinois public education, having experienced institutional interventions such as English as a Second Language instruction, free and reduced lunch programs, and the No Child Left Behind policies. These experiences have informed her work as an educator and teacher-researcher striving to better understand her students’ dynamic lives in hegemonic school systems that have historically minimized the value of student storytelling and the need for humanizing spaces of learning that foster youth’s critical literacy and communal learning opportunities.
Gautam Bisht
Researcher
School of Education & Social Policy
Northwestern University
Gautam is a Ph.D. student at Northwestern University and co-founder of the Sinchan Education and Rural Entrepreneurship Foundation, a not-for-profit organization. He has co-designed learning environments that center language to engage with different ways of knowing, both in India and the US. As part of his not-for-profit work, he provides support for projects that span rural livelihoods, health, and literacy. He is currently involved in research projects that focus on indigenous education, migration storytelling, and local knowledge systems of the Himalayan belt.
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His education and current work are an offshoot of several episodes of migration that span generations and different places. Success within formal education has felt to him like a movement away from home; physically, emotionally, and epistemologically. When his local dialects and cultural orientations were not engaged within school, it had diminishing effects on local ways of relating to the world. These experiences motivate him to support learning environments that celebrate our many worlds and voices, instead of making tradeoffs that are not only unnecessary but also further subjugate already marginalized worldviews.
Tori Choi
Researcher
School of Education & Social Policy Northwestern University
Tori, a Ph.D. student in Northwestern University's Learning Sciences program, has a background in TESOL, language technology, and inclusive classroom practices. Her experience includes collaborating on curriculum design for community language and literacy programs in Philadelphia, developing 3D language learning environments, and creating teacher training workshops for online student engagement. Currently, Tori's research focuses on multimodal storytelling and the application of AI language models in education.
Tori's Korean-American identity has been a journey of complexity and growth. Born in South Korea but raised in the U.S. from infancy, she navigated a landscape of misunderstandings about her heritage. She faced stereotypes and accusations of "pretending to be American," while also feeling disconnected from the Korean community due to perceived cultural and linguistic differences. These experiences highlighted a disconnect that she felt in schools between the celebration of multiculturalism and its actual implementation in pedagogical practices, which in turn shaped her perspective on the need for inclusive education. As an adult, Tori spent 8 years in Korea and learned to embrace identity as an on-going transformative process rather than a static label and hopes to bring this insight into her academic and research pursuits.
Researcher
School of Education & Social Policy Northwestern University
Leslie Yuqui
Leslie Yuqui is a Ph.D. student at Northwestern University’s Learning Sciences program. As a first-generation college student and the child of Ecuadorian immigrants, her educational journey has been shaped by resilience and a deep awareness of the systemic barriers faced by underrepresented learners. Through experiences with institutional supports such as English as a Second Language instruction and free and reduced lunch programs, she developed an enduring commitment to examining the lived realities of students within diverse educational contexts. Despite challenges—economic hardship and balancing school with family responsibilities—she found affirmation through mathematics and through teachers’ mentorship. Her family’s and teachers’ use of culturally rooted tools—such as dried corn (maíz) and traditional games—to teach basic arithmetic reflected creative and culturally sustaining practices that continue to shape Leslie’s approach to learning and teaching.
Building on this foundation, Leslie went on to work as a tutor and later as a preschool lead teacher, where she designed tailored curricula and real-world word problems to deepen students’ understanding of abstract concepts. These experiences motivated her to pursue research and practice that address disparities in learning opportunities. Currently, Leslie’s research explores how multilingual learners use translanguaging practices to deepen conceptual understanding, enhance communication, and foster belonging in mathematics classrooms. She is committed to designing learning environments that move beyond deficit framings and instead celebrate voices and histories that students bring to the classroom. Her work continues to bridge communities across borders, fostering educational spaces that recognize and honor students’ cultural and linguistic resources.
