Chapter One
A few words about me
The Hmong girl · self-portrait
Hello, I'm Linh-Ha
A knowledge seeker, educator, and PhD researcher in the Center for Social and Cultural Psychology at KU Leuven, supervised by Prof. Dr. Jozefien De Leersnyder and Dr. Roy Konings. I joined the lab in April 2026, and my work sits at the intersection of educational psychology, intergroup relations, and teacher research.
My current PhD project is an attempt to arrive at an integrated understanding of what teachers do, why they do it, and under which conditions their diversity practices (School Diversity Models, SDMs) promote educational equity and reduce ethnic prejudice.
The road here
My path winds through three continents. I had my bachelor's degree at Foreign Trade University in Vietnam, then earned a Master's in Adult Education at the University of South Florida in the U.S., and most recently completed my Master's in Educational Studies at KU Leuven in Belgium, where my thesis on pluralism (i.e., schools and teachers value students' diversity — one type of School Diversity Models) and ethnic prejudice in secondary schools became my first first-author paper, currently submitted.
Why this project
As a Hmong woman myself, this research is deeply personal. In 2018, I founded Quy Van Hoa Mong (The Hmong Cultural Foundation) to promote indigenous Hmong cultural values and support students reconnecting with their quickly-eroding cultural roots. The same year, I started Morning Glory English — providing free English classes to high school students from disadvantaged and ethnic minority backgrounds in Vietnam. These experiences taught me, viscerally, that education can change the world — and that everyone deserves equal educational opportunities. And just as importantly, they showed me that the role of the teacher is profoundly important in shaping how students think and feel about their own learning.
Beyond the desk
When I'm not working on this project, I run a YouTube channel with 11.9k+ subscribers sharing educational and learning-related content. I've taught for 10 years across the US, South Korea, and Vietnam — from 5-year-old Spanish-speaking immigrants to university students. I care about making research findings accessible to the people they affect most: teachers, students, and families.
