RAFDI Welcomes Three Fellows Whose Projects Amplify Refugee Narratives and Stories

By Nandini Raisurana

The Refugee and Forced Displacement Initiative (RAFDI) is pleased to welcome its three scholars from the Wilson Center 2024-2025 Fellows Class. Gaisu Yari, a prominent human rights activist and practitioner with lived experience of displacement; Molly O’Toole, an award-winning journalist and former immigration and security reporter; and Lisa Gilman, an accomplished academic and professor of folklore, will be affiliated with RAFDI while working on three different projects uncovering refugee stories and agency.

Gaisu Yari will collaborate with both RAFDI and the Indo-Pacific Program to collect and collate testimonies of Afghan women in exile and highlight their agency and leadership. The brutality of war, the enduring trauma, and the intrinsic resilience of women refugees motivated Yari to launch the Afghan Voices for Hope, a platform for refugees to record memories and engage with each other as a community. While at a refugee camp in Poland, Yari found trust, hope and a sense of community in other women refugees. “Our shared experiences helped us to navigate better options,” she wrote. Since then, she has constantly amplified refugee voices and advocated for gender justice. Through her research at the Wilson Center, Yari hopes to shape the narrative that the concept of women’s rights in Afghanistan was not a result of western feminism and prove that it “already existed” and “is rooted in stories, families and communities.”

Molly O’Toole will work with both RAFDI and the Mexico Institute to weave together stories of diverse migrants and refugees who embark on the same treacherous journey through Latin America to the U.S.- Mexico border in the hopes of attaining the American dream. Her current project – a non-fiction book, “The Route: How American Policy, a Billion-Dollar Black Market, and Indomitable Resilience are Bringing the World’s Refugees to the U.S. Borders” – will follow the journey of a cross-cultural set of protagonists and explore the complex motivations and factors that shape mass immigration in the United States. O’Toole is no stranger to the topic of global migration. Her prior positions as Immigration and Security Reporter at the Los Angeles Times and Senior Reporter at Foreign Policy enabled her to cover stories of migration globally. As she works towards completing her book and podcast at the Wilson Center, O’Toole strives to “bring awareness, combat impunity and apathy...and do justice by those who entrust (her) with their journeys and their lives.” 

Lisa Gilman will be affiliated with RAFDI to expand on her multi-sited project, “My Culture, My Survival: Arts Initiatives by Refugees for Refugees.” Drawing from fieldwork with Syrians in Türkiye, Uyghurs in France, Rohingyas in Bangladesh, various groups in the United States, and Burundians, Congolese, and Rwandans in Malawi, she is writing a book and producing written and multimedia products about refugees and displaced people around in the world.  This project enhances the visibility of refugee talents, potential, creativity, and entrepreneurship. Gilman has published many non-fiction pieces on the intersection of arts and politics, including My Music, My War: The Listening Habits of U.S. Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (2016) and The Dance of Politics: Performance, Gender and Democratization in Malawi (2009.  She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of American Folklore, Director of the Folklore Program, Professor of Folklore and English, and Affiliate Faculty of the Institute for Immigration Research at George Mason University. Gilman asserts that “arts and culture are critical to human survival, especially in times of trauma and dislocation.” Through her project, she aspires to “offer counternarratives about strength, initiative, joy and community while also highlighting the complex and genuine challenges of forced migration”. 

RAFDI is incredibly thrilled to have all the three prolific, positive, and powerful women continue their journey of amplifying refugee stories while in residence at the Wilson Center.