Refugees are forcibly displaced from their homes for for reasons such as genocide, war and climate change. This program explores the reasons explores their experiences, how they create new communities and what the future holds for the countries they left and their diasporas.
Speakers
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Joanna Newman, CEO and Secretary General, Association of Commonwealth Universities
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Olivia Quintanilla, Professor of Ethnic Studies, MiraCosta College
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Monica Sok, Poet and writer
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Khatharya Um, Associate Dean, Social Sciences Division; Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley
Moderator: Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi, Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies, UCLA (Tovaangar)
Image: Mobilus In Mobili (Flickr), "Cambodian American Dance"
About the Speakers
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sponsors
UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies; UCLA Center for the Study of International Migration; UCLA International Institute; UCLA LGBTQ Campus Resource Center; UCLA School of Law Williams Institute
