Welcome Dr. May Lin, Assistant Professor in Asian American Studies

The Department of Asian & Asian American Studies welcomes Dr. May Lin, Assistant Professor in Asian American Studies!

May is a community-rooted researcher and educator who supports transformative social change led by communities of color. She has worked with Long Beach and California-based Southeast Asian, other Asian American, Black and Latinx youth-led organizations such as Californians for Justice, Khmer Girls in Action, Gender and Sexualities Alliance Network, and Yo! Cali.  In over 15 collaborative research reports, she has helped capture the impact of youth-led campaigns on issues such as mental health needs of youth of color in schools; gender neutral restrooms in Long Beach Unified; intersectional aspects of Relationship Centered Schools; and police-free schools. Her scholarly work has focused on how Asian American, Black, and Latinx youth harness emotions to redefine and expansively enact social change, and future work will support local efforts around People’s Budgets. She has published research on Asian American, immigrant, and youth of color-led social change in in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Sociological Perspectives, and Health Affairs.  

Previously, May was a postdoctoral fellow at the Social Movement Support Lab at University of Denver’s Interdisciplinary Research Institute for the Study of (In)Equality, where she supported organizations that work to reallocate funding from criminalization towards positive social supports. There, she also worked on the project defunddata.org. She is also affiliated faculty with USC’s Equity Research Institute, where she worked as a graduate researcher. She received her PhD in Sociology, with a certificate in Public Policy, from the USC, and her MA in Asian American Studies from UCLA.  

At CSULB, she is excited to learn from students & collaborate with students and other faculty to support local racial justice campaigns, as well as to cultivate students’ diverse talents in ways that enrich their personal and community hopes & dreams. She is excited to teach Comparative Ethnic and Asian American Studies with an intersectional lens towards difference and coalition building. Her personal website is at www.mayhlin.com