Suanmuanlian Tonsing earns Oliver Wendell Holmes Travel Award from the Society of American Archivists

University of Michigan School of Information PhD candidate Suanmuanlian Tonsing earned the 2025 Oliver Wendell Holmes Travel Award from the Society of American Archivists (SAA). 

The award supports international archivists who are training or studying in the United States or Canada by enabling them to attend the SAA Annual Meeting, where they can advance their research and receive mentorship from leaders in the profession. 

“This award will allow me to gain deeper insights into the politics of archives, current archival trends and diverse perspectives on the discipline,” Tonsing says. “I am especially interested in engaging with the Native American Archives Section and the Archival Repatriation Committee to learn from and collaborate on meaningful knowledge creation at the conference.” 

Tonsing is a fourth year student at UMSI, where he is researching digital, archival and decolonial research — scholarship that challenges colonial power structures — within indigenous communities. His dissertation examines how epistemic injustice, which is the delegitimization of a group’s credibility due to prejudice or lack of social power, can also be enacted within Indigenous communities themselves. 

A member of the Paite Zomi tribe in the highlands of India, Tonsing has focused his studies on how historical records on social media can harm indigenous communities. He’s looked at how different groups in Manipur, India shared and mobilized archival material online during the 2023 Manipur violence. 

Before coming to UMSI, Tonsing studied media sociology at the University of Delhi, where his research explored how the politics of ethnic consciousness –  the awareness of one’s identity and rights – in Northeast India were shaped by colonialism and further influenced by the media during times of conflict. 

UMSI professor Ricky Punzalan, Tonsing’s dissertation chair, says Tonsing’s research is an "important contribution to his own in Indigenous community as well as the field of archival studies." 

Tonsing joined UMSI in 2022. He chose UMSI because of its “intersectional approach to social problems,” he says. “I am inspired by the impactful work the school has produced and how it contributes to discourse beyond the university, influencing society at large.”

One of his favorite aspects of being a UMSI student, he adds, is the opportunity to learn from peers whose work expands his perspective beyond his field. 

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Learn more about Suanmuanlian Tonsing and Ricky Punzalan by visiting their UMSI profiles.