Recognizing Chali Lee’s Contributions and Welcoming Laureen Hom as the new Associate Director!

We are excited to announce new changes to the AARCS leadership team!

Asian American individual with glasses and wearing a white collared and black shirt with traditional Hmong artwork

We first want to express our deep gratitude and well wishes for Chali Lee, the AARCS Program Associate since 2024. Chali will start his Ph.D. program in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego in Fall 2026.

Chali’s contributions have been integral to our initial success as he helped to inaugurate many of the center’s activities, including the Asian American Politics research symposium, the seed grants, the Stop AAPI Hate internship program, book talks, and research workshops for students. The dedication and care he brought to his work at AARCS - working collaboratively with faculty, students, and staff - has established a solid foundation for us as we continue to build the center’s activities. Chali is also a Stanford alum (Class of 2024), and was actively engaged in many of the Asian American Studies initiatives on campus, including the Asian American Activities Center (A3C), the Asian American Studies program, and the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE). Chali has also presented his scholarship on queer Hmong home-making and community building in the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) conferences.

We wish Chali the best and look forward to seeing more of his contributions to Asian American Studies!

We are also thrilled to announce that Dr. Laureen Hom has joined the AARCS team as the new Associate Director! Laureen has a Ph.D. in Planning, Policy, and Design, with an emphasis in Asian American Studies, from the University of California, Irvine. She also received her M.P.H. in Sociomedical Sciences (Urbanism & the Built Environment concentration) from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and B.A. in Anthropology and Art History from UCLA.

Asian American woman with long black hair and a black floral shirt smiling at the camera

Laureen is an interdisciplinary social scientist who has both academic and applied research experience related to community development, place-based organizing, and participatory governance in Asian American communities. She published her book with the University of California Press, The Power of Chinatown: Searching for Spatial Justice in Los Angeles, in June 2024, which was based on her ethnographic research about community politics and gentrification in Los Angeles Chinatown since the 1970s. Prior to joining Stanford, Laureen was faculty at Cal Poly Pomona and San José State University and the director of the Master of Public Administration (MPA) program at SJSU. She also brings to AARCS her program management and evaluation experience working with health services and non-profit organizations serving unhoused and immigrant communities in San Francisco and New York.

Laureen is looking forward to working with the Stanford community to support research initiatives that center social justice, community building, partnerships with local organizations, and the diverse experiences of Asian Americans!