Chu Paing (Cultural Anthropology, PhD 2024) was selected as one of the College of Arts and Sciences "Amazing Grads 2024." Chu said that graduating "means more than just a degree; it is a constant reminder of many others who made sacrifices and who supported me throughout the process so that I could pursue this degree. I aspire to pay this forward in the near future!" 听
Professor Carla Jones' praises Chu:
Chu鈥檚 record at CU is an essential part of an amazing life course. Chu moved to the United States from Yangon, Myanmar, as a teenage recipient of the U.S. Diversity Lottery. Arriving alone and knowing no one, she chose Queens, New York, as her destination based on research that she would find a large Burmese population there. While working difficult service jobs, she also enrolled in courses at CUNY Queens College, earning a BA with high honors in linguistics in 2017. As a doctoral student at CU, she swiftly distinguished herself by winning a coveted Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation, among other competitive national research awards. Her brilliant and poetic doctoral dissertation in anthropology connects her unbreakable attachment to Myanmar with her new life abroad by analyzing the vibrant diasporic dissident movement following the 2021 military coup in Myanmar. Her scholarship and her life are courageous and inspiring.