Kevin Lujan Lee

Assistant Professor of Indigenous Studies, University at Buffalo

Chapter Member: Boston SSN

Areas of Expertise:

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About Kevin

Lee's research focuses on state-society relations in comparative perspective, particularly the institutional and organizational processes shaping the capacity of low-wage workers to transform their workplaces and communities. Overarching themes in Lee's writings include labor, immigration, economic development, Indigeneity and empire. He is the co-Principal Investigator of the 2021 Guåhan Survey (alongside Dr. Ngoc Phan, Hawai'i Pacific University), and his dissertation project explores how low-wage Pacific Islander workers raise industry labor standards in the 21st-century empires of United States and New Zealand.

Contributions | No Jargon Podcast | In the News | Publications

Contributions

How California’s Workforce Development System Excludes Immigrants, Why It Matters, And What We Can Do About It

Memo, September 2019

In the News

Quoted by in "Planning Just Indigenous Futures," DUSP MIT, October 27, 2023.

Quoted by in "Our View: CHamoru Language, Culture Doesn’t Have to be Compromised," Pacific Daily News, February 20, 2022.

Quoted by Janessa Quitano in "2021 Guåhan Survey: CHamorus Feel Good About Their Identity," Pacific Daily News, February 9, 2022.

Research discussed by Kuam News, in "Study Reveals CHamorus Connected to Culture but Feel Like Second-Class Citizens," February 7, 2022.

Research discussed by The Guam Daily Post, in "Survey Proves We Can Change the Conversation Ourselves," July 27, 2021.

Quoted by Mathew Rodriguez in "Transgender People of Color Often Face Choice Between Racist and Transphobic Health Care Providers," TheBodyPro, September 10, 2019.

Publications

Planning Just Indigenous Futures (edited with Daniel L. Engelberg and yəhaw̓ Indigenous Creatives Collective) (Projections: The Journal of MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2023).

Convenes Indigenous artists, Indigenous community leaders and urban planning scholars in an interdisciplinary dialogue on imagining and realizing more just Indigenous futures.

"Indigenous Resistance As Multiscalar, Insurgent Planning Under Empire." (with Tiara Na’puti and edited by S. S. Fainstein and J. Forester). Resistance and Response in Planning 24, no. 2 (2023): 245-283.

Analyzes how Indigenous Chamorus in Guåhan combine local community organizing, federal environmental legal action, and appeals to international law on Indigenous rights, to combat ongoing US colonization and military occupation.

"Decolonial Subjectivities in Participatory Action Research: Resident Researcher Experiences in the 2021 Guåhan Survey" (with Ngoc T Phan, Nolan Flores, Josiah Gabriel Mesngon, Aria Palaganas, Chauntae Quichocho, and Nikki Aubree San Agustin). Environment and Planning F 2, no. 1 (2023): 264-280.

Offers "decolonial subjectivities" as a concept to qualitatively measure the personal transformations evident when everyday community members participate in decolonial participatory action research.

"Contemporary Moana Mobilities: Settler-Colonial Citizenship, Upward Mobility, and Transnational Pacific Identities" (with Patrick Saulmatino Thomsen and Lana Lopesi). The Contemporary Pacific 34, no. 2 (2022): 327-352.

Analyzes how empire and colonialism opens up particular kinds of migration pathways for Pacific settlers and their descendants who obtain legal citizenship in the "Pacific Triangle" (comprising Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and the United States).

"Toward a Decolonial Quantitative Political Science: Indigenous Self-Identification in the 2019 Native Hawaiian Survey" (with Ngoc T. Phan). Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics 7, no. 1 (2022): 90-118.

Articulates the benefits of a decolonial quantitative approach to Indigenous politics research, through analyzing the relationship between Indigenous and national identities in the 2019 Native Hawaiian Survey.

"New Directions in Racial and Economic Justice: How California’s Worker Centers Are Bringing Worker Power into Workforce Development," (with Magaly López and Ana Luz Gonzalez-Vasquez), UCLA Labor Center, February, 2022.

Analyzes how California worker rights organizations provide workforce development services in low-wage industries with limited opportunities for skill development and career mobility; and how they leverage community organizing and policy advocacy to transform how skills are valued, recognized, and cultivated within low-wage labor markets.

"Healthcare Experiences of Transgender People of Color" (with Susanna D. Howard, Aviva G. Nathan, Hannah C. Wenger, Marshall H. Chin, and Scott C. Cook). Journal of General Internal Medicine 34, no. 10 (2019): 2068–2074.

Analyzes the intersectional disadvantages faced by transgender patients of color in a healthcare system that forces them to choose between racist and transphobic healthcare providers.