Keynote Speakers
Khatharya Um is a political scientist and Associate Professor of Asian/ American Studies. She is also a faculty affiliate of International and Area Studies, the Women's Studies Department, and the joint Berkeley Public Health-UCSF Medical program. She sits on the faculty advisory committee for the Berkeley Human Rights Center and for the Center for Race and Gender Studies. She is currently the Director of the Berkeley Programs For Study Abroad.Professor Um's publication, teaching and research include migration studies, with a particular emphasis on refugee, diaspora and transnational studies, US foreign policies and human security, with a special focus on conflict societies. She has written extensively on Southeast Asian politics. Her current project centers on the politics of memory in post-war Southeast Asia and Southeast Asian diaspora. She has also been actively involved in educational advocacy and has written widely on the experiences of Southeast Asian youths in the American public schools.
In addition to her academic work, Professor Um has been actively involved in community organizing and advocacy. She was a Commissioner of the Cambodian National Health Crisis Initiative and served as Chair of the Washington- based Southeast Asian Resource Action Center, and of the National Association for the Education and Advancement of Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese Americans, the only two pan-Southeast Asian national organizations in the US. Professor Um was also an Executive Board member of the National Coalition of Advocates For Students.
Linda Trinh Võ is an associate professor and chair of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of a book, Mobilizing an Asian American Community (2004), about how and why Asian Americans strategically organized for social, cultural, political, and economic purposes. She is the co-editor of three books: Contemporary Asian American Communities: Intersection and Divergences (2002); Asian American Women: The "Frontiers" Reader (2004); and Labor Versus Empire: Race, Gender, and Migration (2004). She also edited a special issue on "Vietnamese Americans: Diaspora and Dimensions" for Amerasia Journal and co-edited a special issue on "Mapping Comparative Studies of Racialization in the U.S." for Ethnicities Journal and a special issue on "Asian American Women" for Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. She is a series editor for the Asian American Culture and History series published by Temple University Press. She has served on Program Committees for the Asian American Studies Association, the American Studies Association, and the Pacific Sociological Association. Dr. Võ is a board member of the Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Community Alliance (OCAPICA); Project MotiVATe, a mentoring program for Vietnamese American teens; the biennial Vietnamese International Film Festival (ViFF); OC Asian Community Development; and an Advisory Member of the Demographic Research Project for the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC) in Los Angeles.
