Anna Forringer-Beal may be a graduating senior in LSA, but she already has five years of experience with Professor Jason De León’s Undocumented Migration Project (UMP), and even co-authored a chapter with De León in the book “Migrations and Disruptions: Unifying Themes in Studies of Ancient and Contemporary Migrations,” which was published last year.

Since her last year of high school, Forringer-Beal, a double major in anthropology and women’s studies, has worked with UMP, beginning with the creation of a catalog of artifacts left behind by migrants in the desert. Today, the database includes more than 1,000 items.

Forringer-Beal continued her work with the migration project throughout her college career. During her junior year, she began doing her own complementary research, shifting her focus to an ethnographic view of women’s migration experiences.

“My research is on the perception of vulnerability of women who are crossing the border,” she says. “The goal is to show that experiences for undocumented migrants is incredibly varied. There is a dominant narrative about victimized migrants, but they are not always passive victims.”

As part of her research, Forringer-Beal spent six weeks in Mexico interviewing dozens of women about their experiences crossing the border, resulting in the work that forms her current honors thesis.

Throughout her four years at U-M, Forringer-Beal also served as a residential adviser, worked as a co-coordinator for the Sexual Assault Prevention Awareness Center on campus (for which she has also taught classes), and even taught a mini-course for first year students called “From the Ground Up: Understanding Gender Power and Identity.”

Recently, Forringer-Beal was awarded the Beinecke Scholarship, which supports graduate students in the social sciences. She intends to pursue a joint J.D./Ph.D. degree in sociology and immigration law with the hopes of eventually working with populations of people who have been trafficked.