About

The Localized History Project (LHP) is a New York City Council funded, youth participatory history collective working to bring local Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander history into K-12 classrooms. In collaboration with the Asian American Education Project, we’re building the first ever AAPI Studies Curriculum for New York City Public Schools! In addition to our historical research, we also conduct qualitative and quantative sociological research that seeks to understand the Asian American youth experience in schools. You can read more about our research in our recent article entitled,“Localized Histories and Pedagogical Revolutions: Youth Driven Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander History Curriculum in New York State.” Follow us @LocalizedHistory.

Meet the Leadership Team

Shreya Sunderram (Director) 

Shreya is the Director of the Localized History Project, and is a PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center in the Urban Education program. Her work studies the ways in which the history classroom and other sites of knowledge production uphold colonial violence, and how youth resistance and worldbuilding is central to the creation of truthful and just learning spaces. In additional to LHP, her ‘Worldbuilding Pedagogies’ project considers speculative history and critical game based learning strategies as ways to teach history in both content revolutionary and pedagogically revolutionary ways that is anti-colonial and solidarity-oriented. Her dissertation, entitled “Anchoring Ourselves in History: South Asian Diasporic Movements of Study and Struggle,” combines historical archival research with youth participatory action research. In the Fall of 2025, she will be a Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University’s Catalysts of Decolonisation Lab.

Ravi Vora and Clarissa Kunizaki (Co-Youth Directors) 

Ravi is a high school senior and has been a member of LHP for over a year. He enjoys collaborating with fellow researchers and learning about AAPI political movements. As Youth Co-Director of Policy Research & Advocacy, he looks forward to working alongside policymakers and teachers to ensure that the archival projects are taught effectively and critically.

Clarissa is a high school senior and has been part of LHP since its inception. She enjoys researching local histories centering AAPI diasporic identity and cross racial solidarity. As Youth Co-Director of Community and Historical Research, she hopes to foster joy and exploration with fellow youth and community members to uncover radical histories.

Eva Schmidt (AD, Youth Programming)

Eva is LHP's Assistant Director of Youth Programming. Entering her third year with the Localized History project and is excited to continue to find ways to amplify histories of AANHPI communities and peoples with our youth researchers and to see real change implemented into classrooms. Relocated from the Sonoran Desert, she is a CUNY alum and is involved in the dance and theatre community here in NYC!

Ana Serna (AD, Community Organizing)

Ana is LHP's Assistant Director of Community Organizing. Hailing from Long Island, Ana is a labor organizer and community archivist who is passionate about activist storytelling – especially in the Filipino diaspora. She loves learning about social movements (especially through oral history!), tending to her houseplants, and working on fiber arts projects.

Josie Naron (Archivist and Historian) 

Josie is LHP's Archivist and Historian. She received her MA from NYU's Archives and Public History program. Her work is interdisciplinary and draws on oral history and public history, often focusing on the intersections of social movements and the arts. Josie is a transplanted Midwesterner who has called Brooklyn home for almost 8 years. In her spare time, she loves watching the Mets (mostly lose), caring for her adopted alley cat, and making zines.