Mary Helen O’Connor is an Assistant Professor of English, Senior Faculty Associate for the Office of International Initiatives, and a faculty associate in the Global Studies Institute at Georgia State University. Her research and teaching interests are focused on issues of refugee and immigrant education and public policy. Dr. O’Connor developed and teaches an undergraduate course critically exploring definitions of migration, immigration, asylum, and refugee identity through signature experiences in the refugee community in Clarkston, Georgia. In addition to refugee and immigrant issues, she also researches, presents, and publishes on digital literacy, multimodal composition, and technology in the college composition classroom. She has served as a co-director of the Georgia State University Digital Literacy Conference Dr. O’Connor led the college-wide reading program at Georgia Perimeter College hosting among others Congressman John Lewis and Natasha Trethewey (U.S. Poet Laureate 2012-2014).  She has advised two winners of the Jack Kent Cooke Undergraduate Transfer scholarship, Yitbarek Katzentet and Houng Vu. Along with Dr. Heval Kelli, a Georgia State University alumnus, she has co-founded a student mentoring program, MINA, to support refugee and immigrant young adults pursuing admission to college.  She received her B.S. from the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communication, her master’s degree in English and English education from Agnes Scott College, and her doctoral degree from Georgia State University.