Centre for Language Education Research
School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work
Queen’s University Belfast 

Research Seminar - Lub Zej Zog Project: How a coalition of Hmong Educators use participatory design research to (re)claim linguistically and culturally sustaining education

Speaker: Dr. Jenna Cushing-Leubner, University of Wisconsin – Whitewater

All welcome! No need to register.

Abstract: This talk will discuss participatory design research and how it can serve as a change-model, research framework, and site for studying the dynamics and impacts of community-driven heritage language reclamation. We’ll look at the example of Lub Zej Zog Project, a participatory design research project aimed at sustaining Hmong language and culture in the United States. Hmong is a stateless, displaced Indigenous, primarily oral, less commonly taught language that is considered a “refugee community” language in the United States. Lub Zej Zog Project is a recent part of the Hmong community’s fifty-year efforts to insist of sustaining Hmong language and culture in a context of significant assimilation. The talk will discuss the early cycles of participatory design research and how Hmong practices of sib hlub sib pa(a)b (love each other, care for each other) acted as a generative infrastructure for creating tools, processes, and environments needed for language and culture reclamation programs being carried out in the school system.

Bio: Jenna Cushing-Leubner, Ph.D., is an associate professor at University of Wisconsin – Whitewater. She is currently faculty of Multilingual Education and an affiliate faculty with the University of Minnesota’s pathways for heritage language teachers ESL and World Language licensure project. In her work with heritage language reclamation, she partners with communities through the use of participatory design research to develop curriculum, materials, and teacher professional development programmes. Her research analyses the social, political, and historical contexts that interact with community desires for language and culture reclamation and futures.