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About Kevin
Lee's research focuses on (1) the Indigenous politics of decolonization in Oceania; (2) Pacific Islander social movements in the United States and Aotearoa New Zealand; and (3) Indigenous Oceanic political thought, in collaboration with Josh Campbell (UCLA). Lee holds a PhD in Urban Planning and Politics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and will be starting as Assistant Professor of Indigenous Studies at the University of Buffalo in Fall 2024.
Contributions
In the News
Publications
Convenes Indigenous artists, Indigenous community leaders and urban planning scholars in an interdisciplinary dialogue on imagining and realizing more just Indigenous futures.
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.
Offers "decolonial subjectivities" as a concept to qualitatively measure the personal transformations evident when everyday community members participate in decolonial participatory action research.
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).
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.
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.
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.