The Center hosts a 9-month Visiting Scholar sponsored by the Institute of American Cultures (IAC) and a 15-week Scholar-in-Residence annually.
| First Name | Last Name | Institution | Department | Project Title/Name | Years Awarded |
| erin Khuê | Ninh | University of California Santa Barbara | Asian American Studies | Perfect Lies: Passing for the Model Minority | 2019-2020 |
| Josen | Diaz | University of San Diego | Asian American Studies | Configurations of Martial Law: The US-Philippine Cold War and the Making of Filipino America | 2018-2019 |
| Crystal | Baik | University of Southern California (USC) | American Studies and Ethnicity | Demilitarized Futures: Korean Transnational Artists and A Poetics of Division | 2017-2018 |
| Tanachai Mark | Padoongpatt | University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) | Ethnic Studies | Thais That Bind: Food and the Making of Thai American Los Angeles | 2016-2017 |
| Isabela | Quintana | New Mexico State University | History | Urban Borderlands: Neighborhoods and Nation in Chinese and Mexican Los Angeles, 1870s-1930s | 2015-2016 |
| Margaret | Rhee | UC Berkeley | Ethnic Studies | How We Became Human: Race, the Robots, and the Asian American Body | 2014-2015 |
| Sharon | Luk | University of Southern California (USC) | American Studies and Ethnicity | The Life of Paper: A Poetics | 2013-2014 |
| Lily Anne Yumi | Welty | UC Santa Barbara | History | Multiraciality and Migration: Mixed Race American Okinawans 1945-1972 | 2012-2013 |
|
2020: Jane Nguyen Jane Nguyen, a co-founder and core organizer of Ktown for All, has led outreach and policy advocacy since May 2018 when the organization was founded to counter-protest protesters of a proposed homeless shelter in Koreatown, Los Angeles. Nguyen is active with the Services Not Sweeps coalition as a founding member and serves on the board of Invisible People, a nonprofit that uplifts the experiences of unhoused people and produces news and educational materials that reaches millions of viewers worldwide. As part of her residency in 2020, Jane Nguyen will fully dedicate herself to the work of building a grassroots coalition throughout Los Angeles that provides direct aid to unhoused residents, fights for dignity, and housing for all. |
|
2019: Tanzila "Taz" Ahmed Tanzila "Taz" Ahmed is an activist, storyteller, and politico based in Los Angeles. She currently is a Campaign Strategist at the Asian American new media organizing group 18MillionRising.
|
|
2018: Yvonne Yen Liu Yvonne Yen Liu is the co-founder and research director of the Solidarity Research Center, a worker self-directed nonprofit that advances solidarity economies. Over the last decade, she has authored participatory research projects on alternative economic practices in partnership with low-wage service workers, migrant farmworkers, incarcerated workers, and indigenous communities. Her research has led to the $15 minimum wage increase in Los Angeles, which is a $5.9 billion boost for over 720,000 low wage workers. Her work also contributed towards the decriminalization of street vending, a $504 million industry plied by 50,000 microbusinesses on the streets of Los Angeles. She serves on the board of the United States Solidarity Economy Network and co-convened a cohort of Asian American community-based organizations who are building worker cooperatives to increase community wealth and to empower their members. As part of her residency in 2018, Liu explored the history of solidarity economies in the Asian American immigrant and refugee experience, to find lessons from past economies, based on mutual aid and cooperation, to guide future community economic development and forge collective economic agency. "This fellowship provided me with the opportunity to deepen a participatory research project aimed at lifting up the history and contemporary practice of solidarity economies by Asian American grassroots communities."
|
|
2017: Lisa Hasegawa Lisa Hasegawa served as the Executive Director of the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Development (CAPACD) for the past 15 years and recently stepped down in December 2016. Prior to National CAPACD, she was the Community Liaison of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans Pacific Islanders at the end of the Clinton Administration. For her entire career, she has worked at the intersections of civil and human rights, housing, health and community organizing. Lisa is committed to leveraging her cross-disciplinary networks across the country for UCLA students, faculty, and larger community. Returning to the Asian American Studies Center (AASC) as Activist-in-Residence was a homecoming for her. While she was an undergraduate at UCLA, she started her career in community activism through an AASC internship at the Asian Pacific Health Care Venture. "We are in a very challenging period for Asian Americans Pacific Islanders, undocumented immigrants, communities of color, low-income and queer communities," said Hasegawa. "I look forward to facilitating lively dialogue and concerted action among networks of activists, advocates and practitioners, together with students and faculty." As part of her residency in 2017, Hasegawa documented achievements and challenges faced during the Obama Administration. She also engaged students, faculty and community activists in dialogue about how strategies have fallen short, and took stock of policies that can be strengthened, preserved or defended. |
|
|
