Jeremy Rud

Jeremy Rud is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Linguistics at UC Davis. His research interests include sociocultural linguistics, linguistic anthropology, and migration and asylum. His research examines how minute facets of linguistic interactions affect the actualization of migrants’ human rights as they seek asylum in the United States. Specifically, he investigates the role of listening and the ways in which institutional agents, attorneys, and mutual aid volunteers hear asylum seekers in certain ways as they tell their stories on applications for international protection based on “persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion” in their countries of origin. He received his B.A. in Spanish and global studies at South Dakota State University, and his M.A. in linguistics at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Proposal Title: Language, Asylum Policy, and the Politics of Listenership