As this year’s Lang Social Impact Fellow, Chun Wang ’24 will continue to work on improving the social and emotional well-being of migrant youth within the context of climate change-induced extreme weather conditions.

With their project, Wang engages with young people through the method of photovoice, a social work practice and research modality that uses photography for community insights and actions.  

“Youths will develop their own voices and build resilience to negotiate climate and migration vulnerabilities,” says Wang. “I would love to speak with students who are curious about working on issues of migration, art-based and multimedia methods, and health from structural and social perspectives."

Each year, a recent graduate of Swarthmore is selected for the Lang Social Impact Fellowship, which supports alumni in continuing their social impact projects with stakeholder engagement and systems-change work. Key features of the fellowship include mentoring, training, and funding.

Wang also intends to share insights on various stages of project development, particularly on needs assessment, volunteer engagement, and community partnership.

Passionate about leveraging anthropological insights and artistic interventions to think about questions around migration, gender, and health, Wang’s current project builds upon previous experiences through the Lang Center of Civic & Social Responsibility to attend to the voices of migrants.

As a Lang Opportunity Scholar, Wang worked on improving disadvantaged children’s access to art education in China. In that project, they partnered with community-based organizations, university student volunteers, and art galleries to deliver a highly structured art curriculum.

As an Engaged Humanities Studio Fellow, Wang directed an ethnographic film called Magic Fingers 妙手回春. The film followed Sister Jing in her hair salon from September 2023 to May 2024, during the #NoArenaChinatown movement. At once a community hub and a site of personal refuge, the salon becomes a stage where questions of belonging, anti-Asian racism, and gentrification unfold. It highlighted how political voices are amplified through personal practices of caregiving and artmaking, says Wang. 

Wang graduated from Swarthmore with Highest Honors in medical anthropology. Courses they took that are relevant to their current efforts include Humanitarianism: Anthropological Perspectives, Urban Ethnography; Culture, Health, Illness; and Seminar in Clinical Psychology and Well-Being.