Congratulations to MA student Caitlin Chong for winning the 2025 Chinese Canadian Historical Society of B.C. (CCHSBC) Wickberg Graduate Prize!
Caitlin Chong
The Dr. Edgar Wickberg Scholarships in Chinese Canadian History were established by the CCHSBC in 2007 to honour Professor Edgar (Ed) Wickberg (1927-2008), Professor Emeritus of History at UBC and founding president of CCHS. Two scholarships are available to current students at post-secondary institutions in British Columbia who have demonstrated promise of research achievement in the history of the Chinese in British Columbia.
Caitlin received the award for her thesis research on Chinese activism in Vancouver, “Taught to be Palatable: Tracing the Contours of Diasporic Chinese Organizing.” Her thesis examines historical and contemporary Chinese racialization and how being seen as a “model minority” can discourage participation in mainstream activism—but has also led activists to develop new understandings of structural oppression and new opportunities for change.
Caitlin’s research is grounded in in-depth interviews with key community actors and traces the political and intergenerational coalitions that have formed around 105 Keefer. Through the fight for 105 Keefer, she examines urban struggles over housing, gentrification, and community resistance.
“What makes Caitlin’s research particularly novel and important is that she frames these conflicts through histories of Chinatown as well as the literatures on settler colonialism and anticolonialism,” said UBC Sociology Professor Renisa Mawani, who nominated Caitlin for the award.
“This is a wonderful project, taking a case study as the empirical basis for wider questions about Indigenous land, Asian settler colonialism, and historical and contemporary antagonisms among Chinese diasporic communities.”
