huu nguyen
Cultural Architect/Worker and a Circle Keeper | Director of Youth Organizing & Programming at Logan Square Neighborhood Association
Topics: restorative and healing justice, peace circles, community organizing, liberatory practices
About
huu nguyen, Ph.D. is a cultural architect/worker and a circle keeper who grew up in Salisbury, NC. She relocated to Chicago in 2001 to study in the department of pharmacognosy (concentrating in medical ethnobotany) at the UIC. Her passion is to decenter Western medicine in our public health system by reinserting the BIPOC botanical wisdom and cultural healing practices. As a contra mestra in Capoeira Angola, a cultural practice that emerged in response to the violence of the slave system in Brazil, she is a devotee to the practice of sharing capoeira’s liberatory practice as a pathway towards both individual and collective healing, as well as mutual liberation. She is currently the director of youth organizing and programming at Logan Square Neighborhood Association, where she organizes around healing-centered engagement and restorative justice practices in Chicago Public Schools and within community. She lives in the south side of Chicago, with her two teenage daughters and husband, and enjoys walking on her hands.