In 2022, an exhibit in Guam explored the histories of Vietnamese refugee resettlements and the experiences of Indigenous Chamorro communities through photographs, musical performances, and lectures. Located in the center of a popular shopping center for any and all to browse, some visitors returned with boxes pulled from the backs of closets, carrying photographs and artifacts of their own to contribute. A gallery, which can seem at times an untouchable account of events, became a living, community-built history.

This exhibit, Remembering Saigon, came from Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi’s interdisciplinary research, one that aims to understand “how can we both hold space for decolonization movements, land back movements, as well as hold space for questions of refuge and asylum.” Rather than examining places through a nation-by-nation framework, her first book, Archipelago of Resettlement: Vietnamese Refugee Settlers and Decolonization across Guam and Israel-Palestine, connects the histories of Vietnam, Guam, Israel, and Palestine by tracing the “refugee settler condition” to reveal an archipelago of interconnected histories.

The drive that leads Gandhi to connect histories across borders also shapes how she has her research circulate. She made her book open access and distributed hard copies to the Vietnamese refugee, Chamorro, and Palestinian communities whose histories informed it. Open access has allowed her work to circulate—from serving on the M.A. thesis committee of a student citing her work in the West Bank to connecting with a Vietnamese scholar at Seoul National University who is now her co-author. However, Gandhi doesn’t stop there: “because so many people had shared their stories with me, I wanted a way to highlight and uplift their voices as well, [which] led to a series of public history exhibits.”

In 2025, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, Gandhi staged a second version of the Remembering Saigon exhibit at UC Irvine in collaboration with the Orange County & Southeast Asian Archive (OC&SEAA) Center. The Remembering Saigon exhibits in Guam and at UC Irvine translated academic research into public events. In Guam, residents recognized, shared, and added their memories to the historical record. In Southern California, the exhibit drew attention to Guam’s often-overlooked role in Vietnamese refugee resettlement. Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi is a scholar who understands the value of connection and doesn’t see the publishing of findings as the final stage of research. It is a continuing relationship in which communities across the globe encounter, question, expand, and sometimes even transform the history being told.