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Meleia Simon-Reynolds is a third-year PhD student in History with a designated emphasis in Visual Studies. Her dissertation research focuses on transpacific Filipinx immigration to the West Coast and Hawai’i during the early 20th century. She is interested in examining photographs of Filipinx laborers, their communities, and their daily lives in order to understand how the camera was used as a tool of discipline and domination when in the hands of colonial officials whereas Filipinx folks used it as a tool of resistance and built alternative photographic archives. Meleia is passionate about pedagogy and curriculum design. She is the co-director of curriculum development for OMI—recently working alongside Lex McClellan and Drew Richardson to design and facilitate History and Memory in the Okinawan Islands. In addition to her work with OMI, she is a graduate student lead for oral history and educational resource design with the local public history project, Watsonville is in the Heart, which is dedicated to collecting and documenting the stories of Watsonville’s Filipinx community.