The lab is involved in several outreach projects with local Southeast Asian communities including:
SaPa O’Chau Social Enterprise in Lào Cai province, Vietnam. Founded and directed by an indigenous minority Hmong woman Shu Tan (the only Hmong to have started a social enterprise in Vietnam), this social enterprise supports education and training for minority children and young adults.
Members of the SEA Massif Research Lab are involved with this social enterprise, providing feedback on budget, teaching and fund-raising.
Through a small grant from National Geographic US (Legacy Fund) Prof Sarah Turner designed the project “Hmong Voices” in collaboration with Sapa O’Chau. This project ‘gives voice’ or a space for Hmong elders and craftspeople in Sa Pa District, Lao Cai province, in the northern Vietnam uplands, to talk about their understandings of local history and their lives, and to explain different traditional crafts. The project is also a way for younger Hmong men and women working as trekking guides at Sapa O’Chau to learn more about their heritage, by being a core part of the project.
For more on the upsides and struggles of giving back to local communities in socialist countries, please see:
Turner, S. editor. (2013) Red Stamps and Gold Stars: Fieldwork Dilemmas in upland Socialist Asia. UBC Press, Vancouver. [ISBN: 9780774824934]
Lab Members in the Media
Sarah Turner talked about the lab’s new co-edited book: ‘Fragrant Frontiers’ on Cha Da Chats- Hanoi Community Radio. Hanoi. October, 2022.
Sarah Turner talked to Catalyst Candid Conversations about her research on frontier livelihoods and other recent work. [Catalyst is an undergraduate student-run online platform for the field of International Development Studies, McGill University]. April, 2022.
Patrick Slack, a PhD student in the Dept.of Geography, McGill University discusses his ongoing research (MA and PhD) into the role that black cardamom plays in upland, ethnic minority semi-subsistence livelihoods in the western Sino-Vietnamese borderlands. 2021. Podcast of the Indian Ocean World Centre, McGill.
Discutant le coup d’état en Thaïlande avec Catherine Lachaussée sur les ondes de ICI Radio-Canada, Jean Michaud explique les faits ayant mené au renversement du gouvernement le 22 mai 2014. L’entrevue peut être ré-écoutée à l’adresse suivante (à 15h46, segment de 15h à 16h)
Mercredi le 9 avril, 2014: l’émission L’Alternative économique sur les ondes de la radio communaitaire CKIA-FM de Québec recevait Jean Michaud et Samuel Beaudoin pour parler de la pertinence de l’anthropologie dans la discussion critique de l’économique dans nos sociétés contemporaines.
Discussions on teaching methods
Interview with Jean Michaud on ‘Incidental Ethnographers’ by BBC
Notes from the Field
Doing geography the Hmong way by Sarah Turner
Mountains, motorbikes and mapping change by Victoria Kyeyune, Sarah Delisle and Sarah Turner