Professor Khatharya Um is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies, and Program Coordinator of Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies at UC Berkeley. Besdies bein a Faculty Affiliate of the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative, she is also affiliated faculty of Global Studies, the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, the Center for Race and Gender, and the Berkeley Human Rights Center, and serves on the UC system-wide Faculty Advisory Board on Southeast Asia. She was a Chancellor Public Scholar ans is one of the founding faculty members of the Critical Refugee Studies Collective.
Professor Um’s research and teaching center on Southeast Asian politics and societies, Southeast Asian diaspora, refugee communities, educational access, genocide, and the politics of memory. Her publications include recent books From the Land of Shadows: War, Revolution and the Making of the Cambodian Diaspora (NYU Press, 2015) and Southeast Asian Migration: People on the Move in Search of Work, Refuge and Belonging (Sussex Academic Press, 2015).
Professor Um is also actively involved in community advocacy, principally on issues of refugees and educational equity. She has served on numerous boards of directors, including as Board Chair of the leading Washington DC- based Southeast Asian Resource Action Center, and as President of the National Association for the Education and Advancement of Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese Americans. She has received numerous awards, congressional recognitions, for her community leadership and service.
