My research interests center on questions regarding how individuals make choices within drastic moments of cultural, political, and economic constraints—in other words, how individuals strategize within conditions that are not of their own choosing. I have examined this by studying how gender constrains and enables strategies for migration and mobilization at critical junctures of transformation, such as periods of war or market reform, focusing on inter-Asia and Asian America. Concretely, my work has investigated the relationship between marketization and masculinity in Vietnam (Men and Masculinities, 2023); how gender inequalities delimit migration pathways for Vietnamese women and men (Signs 2024); and migrant Vietnamese women’s negotiation of gender expectations as wives and mothers in Taiwan and South Korea (Reconfiguring Vietnam, forthcoming). My current book project is a comparative analysis of the outmigration of poor Vietnamese women who participate in international marriage migration and those of the men they “leave behind” in rural Vietnam. By attending to the relationship between globalization and gender, the manuscript asks us to think critically about who can and cannot marry and how their ability to do so is part and parcel of a global structure rooted in inequality and unequal access. The same interests that motivate me in research also accompany me in my role as an educator. Knowing firsthand that the path to entering and succeeding in higher education is not guaranteed, I approach teaching and mentorship with the goal of magnifying rather than excising the rough corners of our lived experiences. In doing so, I orient my pedagogy towards the celebration and not the flattening out of differences and diversity.