Sue-Yeon Ryu in Miami, FL, during her 2019 winter break.
Ohio University junior Sue-Yeon Ryu was awarded the Anthropology Engagement Award by the Sociology & Anthropology Department.
Ryu is majoring in Anthropology in the Honors Tutorial College. She also added a major in Economics.
“Since joining HTC anthropology, Sue has been an active student within the program and beyond,” says Dr. Smoki Musaraj, Assistant Professor of Anthropology. “She has participated in a number of study abroad programs, including the Tropical Disease Institute in Ecuador and study abroad in Florianópolis, Brazil. She is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese. Sue returned to Brazil in summer 2019 to conduct original ethnographic research on space and identity in Serrinha, a favela in Florianópolis.”
Ryu’s thesis, “How Serrinha Came to Be: Place and Identity in the Brazilian Periphery,” looks at the formal and informal institutions and infrastructures that separate Serrinha from the formal city.
“By living in the favela and becoming involved in the community, Sue gained a unique insight into the everyday lives of residents of Serrinha. She explored how these residents constructed their identity in juxtaposition to the formal city. She also observed how attachment to this place grew from the processes of autoconstruction of informal homes,” Musaraj adds.
“Sue’s thesis is rich in ethnographic observations and photography taken by her during her research. Her thesis makes a contribution to urban anthropology and to social studies of slums/favelas around the world. Sue presented some of these findings at the the Richard Macksey National Undergraduate Humanities Research Symposium. She recently received the prestigious Boren Award to return to Brazil in 2020-21 for research and training.”
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