Using AI to Visualize Interconnected LGBTQ+ Identities and Communities of Care in Atlanta
“You are not alone, and your experience is valued.” These are core messages that Dr. Ethan Trinh has for Asian LGBTQ+ immigrant and refugee communities in Atlanta.
Trinh is a global education scholar, practitioner, and community builder who works at the intersection of equity, care, and access. “I’m interested in exploring the inner struggle of our personal experiences, the outer struggle we encounter in the world, and how they connect in our lives,” said Trinh.
Dr. Ethan Trinh’s digital humanities project, Stories of In-Betweenness: An AI-Assisted Memory Map of Atlanta’s Asian LGBTQ+ Immigrant and Refugee Communities, has been awarded an Atlanta Interdisciplinary Artificial Intelligence (AIAI) Network 2025-2026 seed grant.
This project combines storytelling, mindfulness, and AI-assisted generation of art, poems, and symbolic artifacts to help participants “map” their previous lived experiences and imagine what the future could look like. Led by Trinh’s vulnerability-informed facilitation in three community workshops and a final showcase, eight to ten college-aged participants, who identify as part of Asian LGBTQ+ immigrant and refugee communities in Atlanta, will document their lived experiences, embark on a journey of introspection, and reflect on ideal communities of care with one another. In this AIAI Network seed grant project, which will start in the summer of 2026, Trinh seeks to use AI as an intentional tool to amplify stories and preserve narratives often erased in both queer and diasporic spaces.
Trinh is the CEO and founder of the Dr. Trinh Foundation, an Atlanta-based interdisciplinary, multicultural, and multilingual nonprofit that is building a community of care for historically excluded and marginalized communities, particularly those who live in in-between spaces where systems are not designed to support them, including women of color, immigrants, refugees, LGBTQ+ individuals, and other underserved populations. The Dr. Trinh Foundation works collectively with educators, learners, and community partners. Trinh is also the Associate Director of the Atlanta Global Studies Center, a partnership between the Georgia Institute of Technology and Georgia State University that promotes access to advanced language learning and knowledge of global and intercultural issues. In 2026, they received the Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Award to Brazil for their AI-related project in English language teaching.
Exploring In-Betweenness and Interconnectedness
In the Stories of In-Betweenness AIAI Network seed grant project, Trinh applies various frameworks that explore how everything is connected.
These frameworks include:
the Vietnamese Buddhist concept of the interbeing of all things;
Chicana feminism and its discussions on borderlands as described in Gloria Anzaldua’s 2012 book, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 25th Anniversary, Fourth Edition, nepantla (i.e., an in-between space for self-transformation), and multiplicity; and
new materialist theories that explore quantum physics and the connections between space, time, and matter as described in Karen Barad’s 2007 book, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning.
Each of these frameworks, along with Trinh’s award-winning dissertation, explores how stories, people, places, experiences, and time relate to one another.
“For those with intersectionality within the Asian LGBTQ+ immigrant and refugee communities, there are so many layers that people don’t really see,” said Trinh. “These nepantla communities don’t belong in any one space. It’s neither-nor, not either-or.” Trinh brings an empathetic and vulnerability-informed method to their work with Asian LGBTQ+ immigrant and refugee communities in Atlanta, who have their own stories to share and who may have fled their home countries or have been pushed away from families.
On exploring the identity of in-betweenness, Trinh acknowledges that “understanding the self requires courage to sit and spend time in confronting discomfort.” As an educator and mentor for marginalized communities in and beyond Atlanta, Trinh has taken the time and space to reflect on their personal experiences through walking and writing meditations, which they have published in 2020, including “Still you resist”: an autohistoria-teoria of a Vietnamese queer teacher to meditate, teach, and love in the Coatlicue state.”
In the first Stories of In-Betweenness workshop, participants will share their stories. Trinh will facilitate a meditation for the group to reflect on what “home”, ‘belonging”, and “in-betweenness” mean to them. “It takes courage, and you can’t rush through the process, to be in it is to understand,” said Trinh.
How AI Can Be a Tool to Visualize In-Betweenness and Possibility in Atlanta
The second workshop will focus on using AI as a tool to support multilingual transcription and to create AI-assisted art, poems, and symbolic artifacts to reimagine a future queer space. Participants will first draw their own memory map, which combines geospatial and temporal elements with memories.
The memory-mapping process will draw on participants’ stories to visualize how their identities and memories, as part of Asian LGBTQ+ immigrant and refugee communities, unfold across Atlanta’s neighborhoods. “By using AI as a tool to create art, poems, and artifacts from their drawn memory maps, participants will connect their home country with their identities and reimagine what kind of queer utopia looks like for them,” said Trinh.
To ensure that the AI-assisted tools will support, and not erase participants’ unique experiences, the prompts for the AI-generated memory maps will be grounded in the Vietnamese Buddhist, Chicana Feminist, and new materialist interconnectedness frameworks as a way to make sure that AI is used in a way that is responsible, aware of cultural complexity, and community care.
As a tool, AI will be used in a “negotiation of language,” Trinh shared, providing “a coexistence of lived experiences and technology.” The goal is for AI to support the interpretation of participants’ individual stories and artwork. Trinh said, “AI is a supplementary way to uplift these stories and to give the strength of reimagination.”
The third workshop will be held in a historical location where participants will be empowered to combine technology, narrative, and place-based history to support Asian immigrants and refugees in Atlanta. “The empowerment is the core foundation of this project so that we know our voices and representation matter”, Trinh said.
Prior to applying for the AIAI Network 2025-2026 seed grant, Trinh, alongside international and interdisciplinary researchers, explored how AI could be used as a mindful, human-centered approach to help workshop participants express themselves, regardless of their proficiency in English.
“In this project, we’re looking to provide tools that can help people express their experiences, ideas, and feelings in a creative way,” said Trinh. “I am glad I have a talented group of educators in Atlanta to help me with this project, including Dr. Ankita Rathour (Georgia Tech), Dr. Gautham Reddy (Emory University), and Maya Shah (project assistant)”, Trinh acknowledged.
Where Past, Present, and Future Work Meet
To amplify the stories shared, explored, and visualized, the fourth Stories of In-betweenness workshop will be a showcase that highlights participants' insights. “Each session will illuminate how individuals make sense of their arrivals, homes, queerness, languages, families, and politics amid structures of anti-immigration policy, monolingualism, heterosexism, and whiteness,” shared Trinh in the project’s proposal.
Looking to the future of healing, Trinh sees the AIAI Network seed grant for Stories of In-Betweenness as a bridge for future work, such as exploring additional ways for people to come together to share their stories. The Stories of In-Betweenness project will offer communities new tools to explore belonging, raise public awareness, and build a more just and culturally inclusive Atlanta.
In the spirit of interconnectedness, Trinh views the stories that participants share as insight that will inform future work at the Dr. Trinh Foundation, whether expanding this project at a community level, in corporate environments, in government, or within other organizations.
“Overall, I want participants from Asian, LGBTQ+, immigrant, and refugee communities to know, understand, and experience that they are not alone and that their experiences are valued,” said Trinh, “We want to share your story.”
The AIAI Network applies humanistic approaches to investigate how AI can be used in an ethical, equitable, and in the service of justice. This approach connects Atlanta’s ongoing contribution to the Civil Rights Movement to current human rights topics related to the equitable and responsible use of AI. In 2025-2026, the AIAI Network funded 11 seed grants, on topics such as rematerializing the front surface of Stone Mountain, investigating AI education through the lens of materials and culture for middle school youth in Latinx communities in Atlanta, and communicating the impact of AI on water with textile art.
“The past, present, and future are always interconnected,” said Trinh. “In the present, the goal is to reflect on what you can do with that knowledge, and to identify actions to take as well.” Trinh added, “The focus is on the now and understanding who we are and why we do things. If we don’t understand ourselves, we can't be part of larger organizations in society.”
The Stories of In-Betweenness workshops will start in May 2026, in alignment with Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, and they will be held in partnership with various academic and cultural organizations in Atlanta.
For those in Atlanta’s Asian LGBTQ+ immigrant and refugee communities interested in joining the workshops as part of Dr. Trinh Foundation’s Stories of In-Betweenness AIAI Network seed grant project, you are invited to express your interest using this link by April 24th, 2026.