Scott Muhlestein

Scott Muhlestein is an incoming Master’s student for the fall 2024 term with broad and varied research interests, including U.S.-Asian Relations, Media Studies, Indigeneity, and the perceptions of “homeless” individuals in Hawaii. He’s specifically interested in policy, and the part it plays in these issues on a systemic level, as well as the roles of community advocacy and interfaith collaboration within these issues. Aside from his research interests, Scott spends most of his time writing, swimming, playing music, surfing, and hiking. Scott graduated from Kahuku High School, and later BYU-Hawaii with a Bachelors in English Literature. Recently he spent the summer working and learning how to sail the traditional voyaging canoe (wa’a) Iosepa. Despite these varied interests, Scott would consider his foremost interest to be poetry, because of the way that it can operate and speak to many different levels of the human experience as well as advocate for social change.