Dr. Karen Umemoto is the new director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center and as the inaugural holder of the Helen and Morgan Chu Endowed Director’s Chair. Her faculty appointments are in the Departments of Urban Planning and Asian American Studies.
Her many influential works in the fields of race relations and restorative justice include the books — co-author of Jacked Up and Unjust: Pacific Islander Teens Confront Violent Legacies (University of California Press, 2016), the author of Truce: Lessons from an L.A. Gang War (Cornell University Press, 2006), and numerous journal articles and book chapters. She is also the recipient of research and service honors such as the W.E.B. DuBois Award of the Western Society of Criminology. Her research centers on issues of democracy and social justice in multicultural societies with a focus on U.S. cities. Professor Umemoto’s research and practice take a broad view of planning in the context of social inclusion, participatory democracy, and political transformation.
While at the University of Hawaii, Professor Umemoto also served as the Director of Training for the Asian Pacific Islander Youth Violence Prevention Center (2000-2010) in the School of Medicine, working to reduce youth violence in Hawaii. She has also worked on a variety of community development projects and assisted nonprofit organizations and government agencies with strategic planning.
Professor Umemoto received her Ph.D. in Urban Studies from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and holds a M.A. in Asian American Studies from UCLA and a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Social Science from San Francisco State University. She had served on the faculty of the University of Hawai’i at Manoa since 1996.
