Elon professor is co-author of research presented at the Society for Applied Anthropology

The presentation highlighted two projects of Catherine Bush, adjunct assistant professor of biology and research fellow at the Center for New North Carolinians at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.   

A recent presentation at the Society of Applied Anthropology highlighted two projects of Catherine Bush, adjunct assistant professor of biology and research fellow at the Center for New North Carolinians at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. 

Bush is the co-principal investigator for “Medicinal and Food Plant Use of Montagnard Communities in Greensboro, N.C.” and “Wartime Experiences in Vietnam of Montagnard Immigrants to Greensboro, N.C.”

Betsy Renfrew, adjunct ESL instructor at Guilford Technical Community College and Sharon Morrison, associate professor in the Department of Public Health at UNCG, presented “Sustaining Montagnard Cultural Knowledge through Ethnobotany, Oral History, and Community Health” at the 78th Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology in Philadelphia, April 3-7, 2018.

Renfrew and Bush have spent two years documenting the medicinal and food plants of the Montagnards, a group of tribes that are indigenous to Vietnam, fought with the Americans in the Vietnam War and sought refuge in the United States. Greensboro is home to the largest population of Montagnards outside of Southeast Asia.

The researchers have also been collaborating on a large oral history project of the community members, chronicling the experiences of both men and women before, during and after the Vietnam War.