Katy Maldonado Dominguez is a PhD candidate in American Studies. Her experiences as a Honduran immigrant inform the question at the heart of her work: How do people find belonging? She uses displacement as a framework to understand the way various communities respond to and challenge social, political, legal, and economic systems that disenfranchise and strip people of community, place, and identity. Her dissertation, Displaced Kinship: A Politics of Belonging Among Central American Students, explores how children of Central American immigrants inherit and draw from legacies of displacement to articulate their identities, develop a political consciousness, and navigate higher education. Drawing from interviews with students, she proposes a theoretical framework she names “displaced kinship” to demonstrate how Central American students contextualize legacies of displacement to create community. Using oral histories, newspaper clippings, and social media posts, she is developing a digital archive that traces the emergence and history of Central American student organizing in the United States from 1990-2024. In her free time, she loves to try new crafts and currently has several hobbies including crochet, tapestry weaving, punch needle, collaging, thrifting, and roller derby. She loves her cat, Ginger, and also fosters dogs until they find their forever homes.