Elamin Abdelmahmoud
Host and journalist
Elamin Abdelmahmoud is the host of CBC's Commotion and author of the #1 national bestseller Son of Elsewhere, a New York Times notable book of the year. He is a reporter at large for BuzzFeed News and a contributor to The National's At Issue panel. Elamin was a founding host of Party Lines and Pop Chat for CBC Podcasts. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, The Globe and Mail, and others. When he gets a chance, he writes bad tweets.
Sophia Armen
Community organizer; Co-Director of Armenian-American Action Network; PhD candidate in Ethnic Studies, UC San Diego
Sophia Armen is a South West Asian and North African (SWANA) feminist community organizer, writer, and scholar from Los Angeles, California. She serves as the Co-Director of Armenian-American Action Network and The Feminist Front. Armenian-American Action Network is a U.S. advocacy and research organization fighting anti-Armenian racism in the United States and forwarding civil, immigrant, and refugee rights for our and all communities. She has been building in the survivor justice, reparations and SWANA movement for over 12 years. Armen is a descendant of genocide survivors from Hadjin, Kharpert, Van and Istanbul. Her work has appeared in Vice News, The Hye-Phen Magazine, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and in a cover story for The Los Angeles Times.
Floridalma Boj Lopez
Assistant Professor of Chicana/o and Central American Studies, UCLA (Tovaangar)
Floridalma Boj Lopez is an Assistant Professor in the César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies. Her work uses a transborder approach to analyze the experiences of Maya migrants as they cross settler colonial borders and encounter distinct racial logics in the United States. Her research examines cultural production among the Guatemalan Maya diaspora with a particular emphasis on intergenerational relationships, gender, and the production of Indigenous migrant community in Los Angeles, CA. She is particularly interested in how these communities respond to structures of state violence and understand their relationship to indigeneity in ways that account for distinct experiences across generations. Dr. Boj Lopez is currently working on a manuscript entitled Mobile Archives of Indigeneity: The Mayan Diaspora and Indigenous Cultural Production, which examines how Guatemalan Mayan migrants and youth in Los Angeles challenge notions of Latinidad through material objects such as digital photography, Mayan regional clothing, and children’s literature. Her work has been published in Latino Studies Journal, International Journal of Human Rights Education, and in the book U.S. Central Americans: Reconstructing Memories, Struggles, and Communities of Resistance.
Jennifer M. Brinkerhoff
Professor of Public Administration and International Affairs, George Washington University
Jennifer M. Brinkerhoff is Professor of Public Administration and International Affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. She is the author of Institutional Reform and Diaspora Entrepreneurs: The In-Between Advantage and Digital Diasporas: Identity and Transnational Engagement, and is the editor of Diasporas and Development: Exploring the Potential. She won the 2021 Distinguished Scholar Award from the Ethnicity, Nationalism and Migration Studies Section of the International Studies Association for her research on diasporas. She has advised and provided training on diasporas and development to bilateral assistance agencies, NGOs, and foundations.
Maureen Duru
Founder, The Food Bridge
Maureen Duru has a PhD in history from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel Belgium (VUB). Her research interests cover diasporas, food, and identity. She is a member of FOST--the international social and cultural food studies research group of the VUB. Dr. Duru is the founder of The Food Bridge vzw, a Belgian non-profit organization with projects focusing on indigenous food cultures and heritage, agrofood entrepreneurship, and food security in Africa and Europe. She is also the vice president of Sankaa, a government funded federation of 86 Afro-Belgian organizations working on socio-cultural and development initiatives.
Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi
Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies, UCLA (Tovaangar)
Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi is an assistant professor of Asian American Studies at UCLA (Tovaangar). She is the author of Archipelago of Resettlement: Vietnamese Refugee Settlers and Decolonization across Guam and Israel-Palestine, published open access by University of California Press in April 2022, and co-editor with Vinh Nguyen of The Routledge Handbook of Refugee Narratives, published open access by Routledge in February 2023. She is currently working on a second book project, tentatively entitled Revisiting the Southern Question: South Korea, South Vietnam, and the US South.
Phung Huynh
Artist and Professor of Art at Los Angeles Valley College
Phung Huynh is a Los Angeles-based artist and educator with a practice in drawing, painting, public art, and community engagement. She has exhibited nationally and internationally and has completed public art commissions throughout Los Angeles County. Her work is informed by her experience as a Southeast Asian refugee of Cambodian, Vietnamese, and Chinese ancestry. Huynh is also Professor of Art at Los Angeles Valley College. She has served as Chair of the Public Art Commission for the city of South Pasadena and Chair of the Prison Arts Collective Advisory Council, which supports arts programming in California state prisons. Huynh holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and a Master of Fine Arts degree from New York University. She is a recipient of the City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowship, the California Arts Council Individual Established Artist Fellowship, and the California Community Foundation Visual Artist Fellowship. She is represented by Luis De Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles.
Edina Leković
Community Scholar in Residence, Islamic Studies Program, UCLA (Tovaangar) and Executive Director of the Robert Ellis Simon Foundation
Edina Lekovic is the inaugural Community Scholar of the Community Bridges Residency, a partnership between UCLA's Islamic Studies Program and Fowler Museum. She has over two decades of expertise in storytelling, leadership development and community building. Additionally, she is Executive Director of the Robert Ellis Simon Foundation, which supports mental wellness services for L.A. County’s most under-served residents. While at the Muslim Public Affairs Council, Edina co-founded NewGround: A Muslim-Jewish Partnership for Change and also appeared on CNN, MSNBC, FOX News and NPR. In 2015, she was named one of “10 Game Changing Women” by Los Angeles Magazine after she gave the historic first sermon at the Women's Mosque of America.
Anja Limon
Senior Program Manager, Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration (ORAM)
Anja Limon is Senior Program Manager for the Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration (ORAM) and is based in their Berlin office. She holds a Bachelor of Law from the University of Ljubljana and an LLM in International Law from the University of Bristol, where she focused on migration law and policy. Before joining ORAM, Anja worked at a law firm in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She joined ORAM in Tel Aviv in 2017, during which time she also volunteered for Amnesty International, working with Eritrean and Sudanese refugees in Israel. In September 2017 she moved to Berlin, where she helped register ORAM in Germany.
Rajiv Mohabir
Assistant Professor, Emerson College
Rajiv Mohabir is an Indo-Caribbean American author of three acclaimed poetry collections, The Taxidermist’s Cut, Cowherd’s Son, and Cutlish; a book of translation, I Even Regret Night; and his hybrid memoir, Antiman. He is winner of the 2015 Kundiman Prize, a 2015 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant, finalists for the 2017 and 2022 Lambda Literary Awards, finalist for the 2022 PEN Open Book Award, the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, and longlisted for the PEN/Voelcker Award in Poetry. Mohabir has received fellowships from Voices of Our Nationʻs Artist foundation, Kundiman, The Home School, and the American Institute of Indian Studies language program. He received his MFA in Poetry and Translation from Queens College, CUNY and his PhD in English from the University of Hawai`i. He is currently a professor at Emerson College.
Joanna Newman
Chief Executive and Secretary General, Association of Commonwealth Universities
Dr. Joanna Newman is a Senior Research Fellow in History at King’s College London and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Southampton specialising in the history of antisemitism, the Holocaust, and Caribbean history. Her most recent publication is Nearly the New World: The British West Indies and the Flight from Nazism, 1933-1945. Dr. Newman is also Chief Executive and Secretary General of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, an international organisation, with more than 500 member universities in over 50 countries, dedicated to building a better world through higher education. She is a member of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network’s Leadership Council, and a member of the High-level Advisory Group for Mission 4.7, a new initiative to accelerate policy and research efforts on education for sustainable development. She is a lay member of the Council of Cardiff University, sits on the board of the Council for At-Risk Academics (CARA), and is a member of the Talloires Network Steering Committee.
Diane Sabenacio Nititham
Associate Professor of Sociology, Murray State University
Dr. Diane Sabenacio Nititham is a cultural sociologist who focuses on the dynamics of diaspora, transnational social practices, and home/belonging. She is interested in how these dynamics manifest for people amongst asymmetrical power relations, social policies, and community building. Her book Making Home in Diasporic Communities: Transnational Belonging Amongst Filipina Migrants highlights the intersections of global labor migration and everyday practices for Filipina communities in Ireland. Teaching interests include popular culture, social inequality, migration, and education, as well as courses in Ireland for Murray State’s Education Abroad programs. Recent publications appear in College Teaching and Celebrity Studies.
Olivia Quintanilla
Professor of Ethnic Studies, MiraCosta College
Dr. Olivia Arlene Quintanilla earned her Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from UC San Diego. Olivia’s family is Indigenous to Guam and the Mariana Islands, and she has used her academic opportunities as a CHamoru scholar to research the unique histories and futures of Pacific Island life. Her research interests include critical island and oceanic studies, digital ethnic studies, climate justice, marine-related environmental justice issues, and understanding how militarism impacts Indigenous life and environments. She is a professor with the Department of Ethnic Studies at MiraCosta College in Oceanside, California.
Rocío Rosales
Associate Professor of Sociology, UC Irivine
Rocío Rosales is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. Prior to this appointment she was a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego. She completed her Ph.D. in Sociology at UCLA in 2012 and received her A.B. in Sociology (cum laude) with a certificate in Latin American Studies from Princeton University. Her research interests include international migration, immigrant and ethnic economies, race and ethnicity, law and society, Latinas/os in the US, and qualitative research methods. Her work has been funded by the American Philosophical Society (2011), John Randolph and Dora Haynes Foundation (2010), Ford Foundation (2005-2008), and Mellon Mays Foundation (2003-2012). Her research appears in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and Ethnic and Racial Studies. Her book, Fruteros: Street Vending, Illegality, and Ethnic Community, was published by University of California Press.
Ari Shaw
Senior Fellow and Director of International Programs, Williams Institute, UCLA (Tovaangar)
Ari Shaw, Ph.D., is a Senior Fellow and the Director of International Programs at the Williams Institute, specializing in international human rights, LGBTI politics, and U.S. foreign policy. He was previously on the senior staff at Columbia World Projects and has worked on human rights, global governance, and LGBTI issues for the Open Society Foundations, the Gill Foundation, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the United Nations Association of the USA, among others. Shaw was a visiting researcher at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, where he was a Fulbright Scholar. He was also a Multirights Fellow at the Norwegian Centre on Human Rights in Oslo. Shaw holds a Ph.D. in political science from Northwestern University, an M.Sc. in international relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a B.A. in government from Harvard College.
Lok Siu
Professor of Ethnic Studies and Chair of the Asian American Research Center, UC Berkeley
Lok Siu is a cultural anthropologist specializing in Asian Diasporas in the Americas, cultural citizenship and belonging, and food studies. Her publications include Memories of a Future Home: Diasporic Citizenship of Chinese in Panama and Asian Diasporas: New Formations, New Conceptions, which were recognized with the Association of Asian American Studies Social Science Book Award in 2007 and 2009. She has also co-edited the volumes Gendered Citizenships: Transnational Perspectives on Knowledge Production, Political Activism, and Culture and Chinese Diaspora: Its Development in Global Perspective. Her book, Worlding Chino Latino: Cultural Intimacies in Food, Art, and Politics, is forthcoming with Duke University Press.
Monica Sok
Poet and writer
Monica Sok is the author of A Nail the Evening Hangs On. Her work has been recognized with a "Discovery" Prize from 92Y. She has received fellowships from the Elizabeth George Foundation, Hedgebrook, Jerome Foundation, Kundiman, MacDowell, National Endowment for the Arts, Poetry Society of America, the Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, and others. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Paris Review, POETRY, Kenyon Review, and New Republic. She has taught poetry at Stanford University and the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants in Oakland, California.
Dan Taulapapa McMullin
Artist and Poet
Dan Taulapapa McMullin is a fa'afafine artist and poet from Sāmoa i Sasa'e (American Samoa). Their artist book The Healer's Wound: A Queer Theirstory of Polynesia was published by Pu'uhonua Society and Tropic Editions of Honolulu for the 2022 Hawai'i Triennial, and is available through Printed Matter New York. Their book of poems Coconut Milk was on the American Library Association Rainbow List Top Ten Books of the Year. Their work was shown at the Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Contemporary Native Art, Metropolitan Museum, De Young Museum, Honolulu Museum, Kathmandu Triennial, and Venice Biennale. Their film Sinalela won the 2002 Honolulu Rainbow Film Festival Best Short Film Award; and their film 100 Tikis was the opening night film of Présence Autochtone 2016 in Tiohti:áke.
Khatharya Um
Associate Dean in the Social Sciences Division and Associate Professor of of Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley
Khatharya Um is Associate Dean in the Social Sciences Division and Associate Professor in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California, Berkeley. Her scholarship centers on Southeast Asia and Southeast Asian American studies, migration and critical refugee studies. She has published extensively on Southeast Asia and Southeast Asian diaspora, including Globalization and Civil Society in East Asian Space, Departures, From the Land of Shadows, and Southeast Asian Migration. She has founded and served on the board of numerous refugee-led and refugee-serving organizations and is a recipient of the prestigious Berkeley Chancellor’s Award for Advancing Institutional Excellence and Equity.
Abel Valenzuela
Interim Dean, Division of Social Sciences; Professor of Chicana/o and Central American Studies, Labor Studies, and Urban Planning, UCLA (Tovaangar)
Abel Valenzuela Jr. is the interim dean of UCLA’s Division of Social Sciences and professor of Labor Studies, Urban Planning and Chicana/o and Central American Studies. As one of the leading national experts on day labor, he has published numerous articles and technical reports on the subject. His research interests include precarious labor markets, worker centers, immigrant workers, and Los Angeles. In addition to the topic of day labor, Professor Valenzuela has published numerous articles on immigrant settlement, labor market outcomes, urban poverty and inequality and continues to frame national public and policy conversations on immigrant and low-wage workers. Dr. Valenzuela earned his B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley and his M.C.P. and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was born and raised in Los Angeles and currently lives in Venice Beach with his wife and three sons.
Thuy Vo Dang
Assistant Professor of Information Studies, UCLA (Tovaangar)
Thuy Vo Dang is a professor of Information Studies and oral historian at the University of California, Los Angeles where she also co-directs the UCLA Community Archives Lab. Formerly the curator for the University of California, Irvine’s Southeast Asian Archive and director of Viet Stories: Vietnamese American Oral History Project, Thuy’s work centers voices on the margins of history. She is coauthor of A People's Guide to Orange County and Vietnamese in Orange County and serves as a board member for Arts Orange County and the Vietnamese American Arts and Letters Association.
Katarzyna Wąsowska & Marianne Wąsowska
Artists
Katarzyna Wąsowska is a photographer who graduated from the UAP and is currently an ethnology student at AMU Poznań. Marianne Wasowska is a photographer and visual artist. She graduated from the University of Nanterre (Paris X) with a degree in anthropology and holds a photography master from the ENSP in Arles. Their first project as a duo, "Waiting for the snow", was selected among others by the Fotofestiwal in Łódz (2020), Encontros da Imagem (2020), PhotoEspaña (2020), Odesa Photo Days (2021), Fictions documentaires (2022). The main solo exhibition of this work took place at the Museum of Emigration in Gdynia, Poland (2021).
Ruben Zecena
Assistant Professor of English, Texas State University
Ruben Zecena is an Assistant Professor of English at Texas State University. He specializes in contemporary Latinx literature and culture, which he engages through the frameworks of queer migration studies, border studies, queer of color critique, and women of color feminism. His scholarship appears in the journals WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, Diálogo, an Interdisciplinary Studies Journal, Studies in Spanish and Latin American Cinemas, amongst others. He is currently working on a monograph about the cultural productions of queer and trans migrants in the US.