What influenced your research and teaching?

My past informs my research on immigration. Issues of immigration have been very important to me because my family and I fled the genocide in Rwanda, and we faced the struggles that immigrants faced in their host countries in every country we went through until we settled in Eswatini. There were challenges related to not having legal documents, avoiding border patrols, getting a job, going to school, and how we were perceived. 

It was hard. You’re not getting good grades not because you’re not a good student, but it’s just because you’re not understanding what’s happening. Having people around me who believed in me helped me immensely, and I was very successful when I moved to the U.S. in 2012 for undergrad. 

Trying to make sense of what you want to do in the future is tough. But here I am now, and I faced my struggles in my first year, but I think that just knowing there’s a professor who believes in you, giving you that kind of belief, I think helps a student succeed. 

In my teaching, I’ve seen students starting very slow and picking up very fast, and some even struggled throughout. There are a lot of life lessons that people learn through struggles. When you get rewarded, then it gives you more reason to not give up in the future. Students knowing “that there is a professor who believes in me” immensely affects them.

What is a research project you are currently working on?

I have three book projects. The one I am currently working on looks at China-Africa relationships with two coauthors from China and Japan. We want to understand China’s goal in Africa by examining its influence and how people appraise it. Our goal is to show that people have agency. If we forget about people, we just talk about state-level interaction. 

The second book will look at the entrepreneurship of Somali immigrants in the U.S. and Kenya. I will compare institutions between the cases. I’m trying to see how U.S. and Kenya institutions influence entrepreneurship among Somali immigrants or Somalian refugees. Institutional differences influence different approaches to entrepreneurship and also barriers to entry. If one wants to start a business, to what extent can they fulfill their goals in terms of institutional mechanisms that are available to them? The goal is to try to understand how migrants cope with different institutional structures. 

The third book project concerns refugee women entrepreneurship in Eswatini and South Africa. We try to understand how women entrepreneurs navigate institutional structures and how they contribute to their countries. When you hear about issues of immigration, you only hear about negative stuff, especially in the news. We are trying to shed light on the positive side, primarily focusing on women, because sometimes they’re regarded as insignificant, and what we’re trying to do is bring attention to that and say, “Yeah, they’re refugees, but they do contribute to the economy, and they’re very skillful in how they manage their business, and very creative in how they even go about starting their business.”

Why University of Oregon? 

I’m with people who are in different disciplines. It might be literature or language, so I appreciate that. I can interact with them and talk about various issues, and that helps me understand different complexities. 

When I look at UO, I think it allows me to explore things around me from different perspectives to try to understand them. I don’t think I had that environment before. I think that limited the scope and the quality of my research. Being here and being part of GSL gives me and exposes me to more resources, which I think will be helpful for me in my career.

—Grace Connolly, College of Arts and Sciences