Hu and Meshelemiah Dedicate 2026-27 Seed Grant to Centering Survivors in Anti-Trafficking Research

Drs. Ran Hu and Jacquelyn Meshelemiah were named the recipients of a 2026-27 Engaged Scholarship Seed Grant for their proposal, “A Survivor-Led Symposium on Community-Engaged Anti-Trafficking Research and Activism: Centering Reciprocity, Co-Learning, and Community Care.”

The Ohio State Office of Outreach and Engagement awards up to $10,000 to selected researchers to support community-engaged research or community-engaged projects that address a specific need or problem within the community.

Hu and Meshelemiah’s proposal serves as an expansion of their 2025 project titled “(Re)imagining Survivor Engagement and Leadership in Clinical Storytelling and Decision-Making within Anti-Trafficking Social Service Provision” (hereafter, the “Clinical Storytelling Project”), exploring survivor storytelling in social services through sequential two-phase qualitative interviews with service providers and survivors.

This year’s project further addresses the exclusion of survivors as active leaders in anti-trafficking research, highlighting the epistemic injustice that comes from decentering their stories. Hu and Meshelemiah draw upon years of working as anti-trafficking researchers themselves and their own conversations with survivors, many of whom recounted instances in which their wisdom was disregarded and even misappropriated in other studies.

“This community is not as hidden as people believe,” Hu notes. “There are so many people who are willing and eager to have the opportunity to tell their stories and speak about these issues directly.”

Meshelemiah expands, “We want to create an environment that levels everyone involved in this project, including advocating for proper compensation and credit to participating partners.”

In addition to Hu and Meshelemiah, the team consists of current doctoral candidate, Hunmin Cha, and the following external community research partners with lived experiences:

• Stephanie Anderson is a Neurodevelopmental Consultant and Founder of Begin Again International, serving as an external partner and participant with The Ohio State University’s Clinical Storytelling Project. Her work contributes a trauma-informed, neurodevelopmental lens to community-based participatory research (CBPR), with particular emphasis on integrating nervous system–informed self-care practices to support researcher sustainability, ethical engagement, and resilient community collaboration.
• Anchal Jain is an advocate and researcher specializing in trauma-informed methodologies and community-engaged practice with survivors of violence and exploitation. Her work focuses on integrating relational ethics into research design to reduce harm, strengthen survivor agency, and advance more equitable approaches to knowledge production. She serves as a technical training assistant, state council board member, advisory board member, and consultant to government and nonprofit organizations, advancing system-level transformation grounded in reciprocity, survivor-centered practice, and community care.
• Bianca Ramos is an independent researcher and consultant, and currently a community researcher on the “Clinical Storytelling Project” team.
• Andy Stowers is currently a community researcher on the “Clinical Storytelling Project” team. Andy is also a research fellow at CAST LA.

Together, these researchers intend to demonstrate the proven benefits of community-based participatory research (CBPR) for enhancing study rigor and ethics through engaging in a sustainable survivor leadership infrastructure.

A key aspect of this process is the use of a reciprocal co-learning methodology, in which every participating member operates as both a contributor and learner with the intent of building a community of collective knowledge amongst everyone. Reflecting on their meetings so far as a team, Hu and Meshelemiah emphasize the meaningfulness of hosting an equitable space for such shared dialogues.

“I feel taught every time I leave a meeting,” Meshelemiah remarks. “You leave as a different person, as a different researcher each time.”

Hu adds, “I feel challenged in an amazing way every time we gather. We’re all just humans trying to exercise care from our relationships to one another as partners.”

Through the culmination of these shared experiences and lessons, the team will translate their methodological learnings into actionable “best practice” strategies for those engaging in anti-trafficking CBPR work and scholarly activism. Such strategies will be illustrated through two interrelated activities: a co-developed practical guide for researchers involved in anti-trafficking work and a survivor-led symposium in Spring 2027.

Hu and Meshelemiah hope that their team’s project not only opens more doors for survivors to work as leaders of anti-trafficking research, but to also combat the very systems and attitudes that seek to relegate their stories to the periphery.