2024-2025 Labor Studies Scholarships and Prizes

Stephanie Herrera, Nursing

Herrera, a dedicated undergraduate student in Nursing, has been passionately advocating for the healthcare, rights, and safety of agricultural workers since she was just ten years old. Her own experiences as the daughter of agricultural workers have given her a deep understanding of the language barriers and challenges they face in accessing equitable healthcare. Herrera works as an ESL tutor for Casa Latina, where she teaches English to Latinx individuals. Her goal is to help them advocate for themselves and pursue new job and education opportunities. She is also active in student-led organizations and independent farm worker groups, where they unite, organize, and take action to support farm workers. Additionally, as a nursing student, she is working to establish the first Latinx student nursing organization at UW. After completing nursing school, she plans to return to the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic to provide preventive education, access to resources, and compassionate care to the farmworker community. Her long-term goal is to continue advocating for policy changes that promote accessible health justice.

Sofia Torres, Political Science and History

Torres is an undergraduate student completing their degree in Political Science and History with a minor in Labor Studies. Having grown up in Kennewick close to the Hanford Site, they found a passion for organizing and advocating for workers’ rights through the realization that migrant workers like their family faced the most risks and had the least protections. As a student, Torres is involved in two organizations focused on international solidarity in labor and anti-imperialism: UW United Students Against Sweatshops and Resist US-Led War Seattle. With UW USAS, they recently collaborated on a national day of action with Starbucks workers, leading Starbucks to announce its intention to bargain with unionized stores after years of delays. Currently, they are working to organize students to pressure the university into fair contract negotiations with UW Housing and Food Services. With Resist US-Led War Seattle, they traveled to San Francisco in November 2023 to protest the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

​Tristan Jafari, Biochemistry

Jafari is a Biochemistry undergraduate student and an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT). As a second-generation Iranian-American immigrant, he understood early on the struggles his family faced as workers before the Iranian Revolution. Drawing from this history, Jafari gained a deep appreciation for the vital role of organized labor, especially in the healthcare sector. In his studies, he is interested in further understanding how labor policies, workers' rights, and social determinants of health intersect to shape the health landscape. As an aspiring healthcare provider, he is driven by a passion for social justice and the recognition of the integral connection between labor rights and health outcomes.

​Alyssa Siron, Community, Environment, and Planning

Siron is an intended Community, Environment, and Planning major with a Labor Studies minor undergraduate student. As a Starbucks worker, Siron experienced firsthand issues and poor working conditions at her location. Management failed to listen to their concerns, reaffirming their inaction on worker safety and racial discrimination. Siron joined the Starbucks Workers United union with her co-workers and participated in many local actions to address safety concerns. The organizing committee has continuously encouraged her involvement in the union, and she currently attends weekly meetings with Seattle area organizers and national meetings with the Contract Action Team. She hopes to apply for a Barista Organizing Internship, an opportunity for baristas to get engaged with actively organizing a non-union store. As an Anakbayan UW (ABUW) member, she has also gained a deeper understanding of the political and economic situation in the Philippines and how it relates to the Filipino diaspora—which in turn will help Siron build relationships and community with Filipino and non-Filipino workers during her time in Seattle.

​Maia Cruz, Anthropology and Spanish

Cruz is an undergraduate student majoring in anthropology and minoring in Spanish. From a young age, she has used art to connect with her identity and advocate for justice in her community. Cruz has taken an active role in teaching lessons and guiding conversations on equity to advance the cultural needs of underrepresented communities, and supporting protests by marching across the Interstate Bridge to rally for immigrant rights. Through her commitment to leadership and representation of Latinx students, she served as the president of the Latinx Student Union at her high school. These experiences fostered a deep interest in studying Latinx communities' cultural dynamics and labor-related struggles. Cruz plans to be active in the labor movement during her studies at the University of Washington by participating in workshops, joining student organizations, and volunteering opportunities that will develop practical skills in advocacy and organizing. After graduating, she will use her education to promote fair labor practices, protect workers’ rights, and advance social justice.

​Nabila Kadir, Pre-Sciences

Kadir is a Pre-Sciences undergraduate student focusing on environmental activism and immigration law to become an advocate for those in need and effect positive change in the labor movement. As a Black, Muslim woman, her passion for environmental justice is deeply rooted in her identity and experiences. Through activism, education, and community engagement, she strives to amplify the voices of marginalized groups in the environmental discourse and advocate for policies that prioritize justice, equity, and sustainability. This drive began when Kadir sought other Muslim women who shared her passion for nature and justice. Together, they embarked on a journey of exploration and empowerment, breaking stereotypes and reclaiming their rightful place in outdoor spaces through community clean-up events, planting trees in urban neighborhoods, and advocating for policies that prioritize environmental health and well-being for all. As the first in her family to experience college, she plans to seize this opportunity to pursue her passions, expand her horizons, and contribute meaningfully to advancing the interests of marginalized communities.

​Amrine White, Communication Leadership

White is pursuing a Master's in Communication Leadership with specializations in community engagement and organizational communications to supplement her Bachelor's in Political Economics, Diversity, and Labor Studies. With early exposure to union life through her parents and grandparents, White grew up understanding that ‘union is strength’ but also family. Her involvement with labor studies grew during her undergraduate years as she found community within the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies. She also serves her community locally through volunteer work with the Pike Market Senior Center and Mary’s Place. In 2022, her first thesis, "Unstable Foundations: Poor Whites and the Fight for Economic Emancipation," received the Pacific Northwest Labor History Association's (PNLHA) "Best Paper in Labor Studies" award. Additionally, in 2023, her second thesis, titled "My Neighborhood School: A Geospatial Analysis of the Relationship Between Race, Wealth, and Segregation of Seattle Public Schools," also received the "Best Paper in Labor Studies" award from the PNLHA. In pursuing her Master’s degree, White plans to specialize in community and culture building and professional and organizational leadership, becoming an advocate for workers’ voices in her city. She believes the path forward for securing labor rights starts with organization, representation, and community building on a local scale.

​Inhauck Choi, Human-Centered Design and Engineering

Choi is an incoming graduate student in Human Centered Design & Engineering, specializing in designing technology that cultivates equity, accessibility, and opportunity. His passion for social justice is a direct reflection of his family history, as he helped his immigrant parents navigate the faulty healthcare systems of the U.S. from a young age. As an undergraduate student at Cal Poly Pomona, he actively advocated for the rights of campus communities and developed culturally aware mental health programs for underrepresented students. Choi played a crucial role in the hiring process of five culturally diverse student counselors and collaborated with CSU trustees to allocate funding for campus cultural/diversity centers. He also initiated the Undocu-Asian Research Fellowship to support undocumented Asian undergraduate students in research and received recognition through the Bronco Dreamers Scholarship for his work. As a technology student and researcher, he has witnessed the positive impact that technical innovations can have on people’s lives. Seeing the advancement of AI and pandemic layoffs in the tech industry, Choi believes in utilizing his experiences in both labor and social justice advocacy to fight for the equitable rights of tech employees. Upon completing his degree, he plans to merge his experiences in psychiatry and human-computer interactions to launch a startup dedicated to providing mental health support beyond conventional counseling, prioritizing underserved communities.

Natalie Turner, Social Work

Turner is a third-year Ph.D. student in Social Work focusing on addressing racial and geographic inequities in providing Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) among older adults. With an abundance of firsthand experience as a social worker in aging services, she is passionately pursuing research that aims to ensure the needs of both patients and their family caregivers are met. She believes that caregivers play a vital and skilled role that is often overlooked, under-compensated, and under-appreciated. Her efforts have already made a meaningful impact, such as implementing a Self-Direction program for an Alzheimer’s patient and his family, significantly improving their quality of life. In her commitment to supporting those providing care labor, Turner has most recently worked with faculty emeritus at UW to identify and synthesize literature for an upcoming book on a care justice framework. She has also facilitated care labor discussions in a class she taught in the MSW program. Turner aspires to investigate and improve policies and programs within the long-term care system as she seeks to create a more equitable and compassionate environment for older adults and those providing care labor.

​Runjie Wang, Cinema and Media Studies

Wang is a graduate student in the Cinema and Media Studies program. As a historian of media and labor, he studies the intersection of optical media, automation, labor, and race, with a particular focus on machine vision designed to replace human labor in industrial settings. In his award-winning essay, he discusses how cinematic medium contributed to the classification of diverse ethnic populations during China’s early years and the consolidation of the concepts of ethnicity for the nation. Wang has taken an interest in researching automation technology in the longshore industry and has already been examining the history of longshore labor in the Pacific Northwest through the archives at The Civil Rights & Labor History Consortium. With his extensive knowledge in media, technology, labor, race, and gender studies, his interdisciplinary research on media will greatly contribute to the comprehensive understanding of longshore labor history from a technological and media perspective.

​Eulalie Mathieu, Library and Information Science

Mathieu is a dedicated graduate student pursuing her Master’s in Library and Information Science. Having organized climate protests in high school, her interest in labor and social justice activism began at a young age. She first developed an interest in labor history through her involvement with the Socialist Alternative, and during her undergraduate studies at UW, she worked to incorporate labor history and elements of labor studies into her coursework. Mathieu has been vital to the Labor Archives of Washington for the past two and a half years. She began working as a student Curatorial Assistant and is now a Preservation Specialist, where she continues to process records and streamline workflows for oral histories. Her most recent project includes a collection of 46 interviews with members of the Pacific Coast Pensioners Association, where she worked diligently to make the interviews more accessible by adding timestamps, caption tracks, and indexed segments. She hopes to continue working for the Labor Archives, promoting awareness about local labor history, and studying community archiving models during her graduate education.

​Jordan F.S., History

Jordan is a graduate student pursuing a Master’s in History. They have been extensively involved in various organizations during important campaigns, demonstrating a lifelong dedication to labor organizing. Since 2005, they have worked with the Coalition of Immokalee (CIW), the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), and numerous other grassroots labor and radical justice organizers. Jordan's work focuses on understanding the lasting connections between race and labor, integrating this knowledge into their research and coursework at Seattle Central and the University of Washington. After moving to Seattle, Jordan joined the Left Banks Books Collective, initially as a volunteer and later advancing to the role of archivist. In their graduate studies, their research has shifted to examining the histories of the Pacific Northwest fisheries and their management. With a background as an advocate for racial justice, Jordan aims to utilize their skills to delve into the regional and national archives of fisheries management in order to gain a better understanding of the intertwined histories of border-making, white supremacy, and the racialization of labor in the historical and ongoing processes of Indigenous displacement through the creation of new forms of maritime labor.

Best Paper in Labor History: Nolan DeGarlais

Multiracial Labor Organizing and Community Building in Roslyn, Washington, 1888-1907 

As a part of their History Honors Thesis, DeGarlais charts the evolving history of racial conflict to interracial cooperation at the turn of the 20th century in Roslyn, Washington, one of the largest Black communities in the Pacific Northwest. This thesis analyzes the shifting nature of class and race relations in Roslyn, juxtaposing the 1888 strike and the 1904 strike to uncover how multiracial cooperation led to the creation of the racially integrated and largest local union at the time, the United Mine Workers of America. At a time and place where white supremacy ran rampant and the ruling class instigated class strife by pitting white workers against black workers, interracial cooperation was thought to be beyond the pale. DeGarlais’ original historiographical intervention works against this commonly held belief by centering solidarity: white and black workers worked together to create an interracial labor organizing force that brought together black miners and white miners from the European periphery (such as Italy and Eastern Europe) and culminated in the successful 1904 strike and subsequent contract of better working conditions and higher pay. 

Best Paper in Labor History: Al Wagner

Their Oil Would Become Tears: Labor, Culture and Resistance through Olive Cultivation in Palestine​

Wagner’s historical and timely essay explores the connections of the olive tree’s central importance in Palestine to issues of culture, ecology, labor, occupation, and resistance. This essay follows the olive tree and its historical development and paints a full picture of the development of Palestine as a region with the olive tree’s centrality to the vibrant culture and critical resource of the Palestinian people. We are offered a meticulous look into the olive tree first throughout history, then to there and now during the current period of occupation, and far into Palestine’s future. Critical to this present moment, Wagner asks: “What role does the olive tree play in Palestinian culture, including resistance against occupation?” The olive tree is indeed essential to the political economy of Palestine by encapsulating methods of labor in olive tree agriculture and olive oil production. At the same time, the olive tree is a target of environmental warfare, Wagner argues, as Israel targets the olive tree as part and parcel to the settler-colonial project of Indigenous genocide and ecocide. As Wagner shows, the olive tree has also become a symbol of resistance; as the olive tree endures, so too do the Palestinian people.  

Best Project in Labor History - Special Recognition

Gum Saan to Golden Spike, AAS 405: Asian Americans in the Pacific Northwest

Gum Saan to Golden Spike is the first volume from the UW student-produced comic novella trilogy series, Passage Through Seattle: The Wong Family Saga, 1851-2023.  The series is intended to combat stereotypes and ignorance about Asian American history and contributions, and to allow young artists to express themselves and help draw parallels between current-day events and the past. The first issue tells the story of Wong Ho Ping who, in 1851, leaves post-Opium War China in search of gold in California or “Gum Saan.” His journey takes him and his descendants from digging for gold, to striking against the Central Pacific Railroad, to building the transcontinental railroad. 

Best Graduate Paper in Labor Studies: Tess Abrahamson-Richards, Social Welfare

Projected Paid Parental Leave Access and Equity Among American Indian and Alaska Native Working Mothers in Washington State

This qualifying scholarly paper addresses an important gap, namely how paid family leave and paid leave access and experiences among American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) people needs to be better researched. Abrahamson-Richards investigates the intersections between a stable income, equitable access to parental leave, and their associated outcomes among AIAN mothers in Washington State. Paid family and medical leave policies (PFML) have substantial benefits on health and employment, yet questions of equity remain as AIAN families are less likely to receive employer based paid maternity leave. Using a mixed-methods approach that integrates qualitative and quantitative analysis grounded in an Indigenous theoretical framework, the author takes into consideration AIAN economic, health, and holistic wellbeing. Abrahamson-Richards critically analyzes this equity by understanding it as part of the history and ongoing process of settler-colonialism; for example, AIAN face high levels of maternal morbidity and mortality. Ultimately this study calls for improvements PMFL research and policy making with the need for further comprehensive, culturally aligned investigations that address inequity in the AIAN community around access and utilization in Washington State.

Best Undergraduate Paper: Liam Hunter, University of Washington - Bothell

Uyghur Forced Labor: The Role We Play​

This research paper explores the humanitarian crisis the Uyghur population in Xinjiang, China faces by the Chinese state by analyzing labor conditions in the framework of human rights. Electronic commerce, colloquially known as e-commerce, has reached behemoth proportions in China due to, in part, lax environmental regulations and labor protections and the massive websites—such as AliExpress, Shopify, Shein, and Temu that enrapture U.S. consumers—reap in the benefits. Hunter provides a historical approach and analysis while utilizing primary research consisting of engaging congresspeople, embassy officials, and influential Non-Governmental Organizations in Washington D.C. Human rights activism is at the forefront of this paper to improve the situation of Uyghurs in China, and Hunter makes the argument that the Uyghur population in Xinjiang are subjected to cultural genocide through forced labor and reeducation efforts. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) is in place to address this human-induced tragedy, but the benefits, loopholes, and struggles of current U.S. foreign policy and United Nations humanitarian efforts are limitations that Hunter shows need to be improved via a complete rehaul and buffing up of policy.

Best Paper in Labor Studies: Niki Muratori, University of Washington - Tacoma

Sex Workers of the World Unite: Examining the Collective Strategies of Sex Workers​

This research paper puts forth an understanding of sex work, not traditionally viewed as proper work, as indeed being work. Using a labor studies framework, Muratori makes the compelling case to conceptualize sex work as part of the labor movement in light of recent collectivization efforts across the globe. For example, exotic dancers have organized to improve working conditions, demand higher wages, and increase their safety and wellbeing and have formed unions across Spain, the United Kingdom, Oregon, or Los Angeles, California where dancers in 2023 formed the first union in the U.S. since the 1990s. Workers in the Los Angeles club Star Garden organized and fought to be recognized as workers—rather than independent contractors—and unanimously voted to join the Actors’ Equity Association. Muratori shows us that by expanding the labor movement to include sex workers is both an act of inclusion and solidarity  but also a strategy to improve working conditions for sex workers and other workers alike. 

Honorable Mention: Caleb Anspach, University of Washington - Tacoma

Planning and Sprawl in Puyallup, Washington: Symptoms and Solutions​

In this research essay Anspach analyzes the urban planning behind the city of Puyallup, Washington to highlight both the history behind the decision making process and how planning efforts could be used to improve the city. As the federal government pushed the United States to depend on the automobile as the main method of transportation following World War 2, Puyallup was no different. Poor city planning and the reliance on automobiles have led to decades of urban congestion and traffic. The author makes the case that rebuilding U.S. cities is a long uphill battle, but is also a journey worth taking to improve living conditions.