For Helen Mei, place is more than a point on a map. It’s something that is lived, remembered, and shared.

A senior majoring in rhetoric & communication studies and film studies, Mei is also a Joy of Giving Something Fellow with Imagining America, which supports undergraduates in using photography and digital media to build community and elevate underrepresented stories. For Mei, the fellowship has validated that creative work rooted in personal experience can also be rigorous, scholarly, and impactful.

Imagining America selected eight students nationwide for the fellowship, which provides a tuition scholarship, mentorship, and funding for a community-based project. For Mei, it also marked her first external scholarship in the United States.

“It was a huge recognition of my personal goals and career path,” she said. “I had only ever worked within the University of Richmond sphere. This opened up a much larger network of people doing work I really admire.”

Mei’s path to Richmond has long crossed borders. An international student from Shanghai, she attended high school in Bosnia before choosing a small liberal arts college in this country.

“I knew I wanted to go to a place where I could actually know my professors,” said Mei, who feared getting lost at a huge university. “At a liberal arts college, you get resources, mentorship, and real relationships.”

Exploring sensory ethnography

Those relationships now support a fellowship project that blends cultural geography, photography, and digital storytelling. In February, Mei organized a community walking tour in Carytown, inviting 10 students to reflect on how different spots in the Richmond neighborhood evoke memories, emotions, and sensory experiences.

Participants engaged in what Mei calls “sensory ethnography,” responding to prompts during the walk. Their reflections will be mapped onto an interactive digital platform to visualize how individual experiences form a collective understanding of place. Ultimately, she will create art about that space, using scale and spatial design based on the students’ input.

“I’m interested in how people with different positionalities experience the same physical space,” she said. “Someone new might notice colors or smells. Someone who’s lived there might associate it with personal or historical memory.”

The project builds on an earlier research project, where she assisted the Department of Geography, Environment, and Sustainability last year in developing an interactive website that gives dimension to the complex connections between housing segregation and educational inequality in Central Virginia. Kyle Redican, director of UR’s Spatial Analysis Lab, mentored her on that work and supported her on the Carytown experience.

“Helen sees things so far out of the box as she marries her love of geography, her love of art, and her love of places,” he said. “This project connects students with each other, from how they bring awareness to engaging their various senses to defining what Carytown is and what is happening there at that moment of time.”

The fellowship’s learning exchanges also have shaped Mei’s work. Fellows meet virtually across time zones to share updates, solve problems, and talk candidly about budgeting, logistics, and project design.

“We talk about how to use the funding efficiently to actually accomplish what we want,” Mei said. “It’s not just creative. It’s very practical.”

Last year, she attended the Imagining America National Gathering in New Mexico, an experience she describes as unexpectedly transformative. “I’ve never bonded with strangers that quickly,” she said. “We all came in open, curious, and willing to engage with each other’s passions. It completely changed how I think about conferences.”

One presentation stayed with her — a professor who built research through oral histories within her own family. “She transformed personal inspiration into academic research in a very bold, vulnerable way,” Mei said. “That’s a skill I really hope to have someday.”

Senior year and graduate school plans

Balancing the fellowship with senior-year coursework has been demanding but manageable.

“It’s taught me a lot about time management and project management,” she said. “Research doesn’t just happen on a computer screen – you have to talk to people.”

Mei will move to New York City, where she will pursue an M.A. in media studies at the Parsons School of Design | The New School. She hopes to become a multimedia artist and educator who uses storytelling to help people see familiar places in new ways.