IHRC - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student, Department of History
- History
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- Executive Director, Human Rights Program / Student Members
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- Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
Erika Lee is an award-winning historian, author, and public scholar. She is a Regents Professor of History and Asian American Studies, director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota, and president of the Organization of American Historians. The granddaughter of Chinese immigrants, Lee was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the American Antiquarian Society and testified before Congress in its historic hearings on anti-Asian discrimination and violence. She is the author of four award-winning books including The Making of Asian America and America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in America, which won the American Book Award and the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, as well as other honors. Named to many best books lists and identified as an essential book illuminating the Trump era and the 2020 elections, America for Americans was recently re-published with a new epilogue on xenophobia and racism during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Making of Asian America was also recently republished with a new postscript about the latest campaigns against Asian Americans.
Lee co-founded and directs three major digital humanities projects: Immigrant Stories, #ImmigrationSyllabus, and Immigrants in COVID America, and she is a regular commentator in the media, including featured appearances in the PBS film series "Asian Americans" and interviews with CNN, PBS NewsHour, National Public Radio, the New York Times, and more. Her opinion pieces have been published in the Washington Post, Time, the New York Daily News, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Dean for International Programs and Director, Institute for Global Studies
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- Director of Cataloging, Metadata, & Digitization Services, University Libraries
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- Associate University Librarian for Research
Job Titles:
- Professor of English and Asian
Josephine Lee is Professor of English and Asian American Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and the editor in chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature and Culture. Recent books include Race in American Musical Theater (Bloomsbury), Oriental, Black, and White: The Formation of Racial Habits in American Theater (University of North Carolina Press), and the edited collection, Milestones in Asian American Theatre (Routledge). Her previous books include The Japan of Pure Invention: Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado (2010) and Performing Asian America: Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stage (1997). She has also co-edited Asian American Plays for a New Generation (with R.A. Shiomi and Don Eitel, 2011), Re/collecting Early Asian America: Essays in Cultural History (with Imogene Lim and Yuko Matsukawa, 2002), and Asian American Literature in Transition, 1850-1930 (with Julia H. Lee, 2021).
Job Titles:
- Archivist, Social Welfare History Archives, University Libraries
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of History at Gustavus Adolphus College
Maddalena Marinari is an associate professor of history at Gustavus Adolphus College. She has published extensively on immigration restriction and immigrant mobilization, including articles published in the Journal of Policy History, Journal of Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Social Science History, and Journal of American Ethnic History. She is the author of Unwanted: Italian And Jewish Mobilization Against Restrictive Immigration Laws, 1882-1965 and co-editor of A Nation of Immigrants Reconsidered: U.S. Society in an Age of Restriction, 1924-1965. She is also one of the scholars who created the #ImmigrationSyllabus, an online tool for anyone interested in understanding the history behind current debates on immigration. This year, Professor Marinari is helping the IHRC update the #ImmigrationSyllabus, and with two undergraduate students from Gustavus Adolphus College, is contributing to the COVID-19 & Immigrant America project with a Social Science Research Council Rapid-Response Grant on COVID-19 and the Social Sciences.
Job Titles:
- Director, Immigration Response Team and Assistant Director for Compliance and Legal Affairs, Global Programs and Strategy Alliance
Michele Waslin is the interim director of the Immigration History Research Center. In her role, Waslin tracks and analyzes immigration research and policy, writes on related topics, coordinates the work of the IHRC, and builds relationships with academics and other experts. Waslin has written extensively on immigration policy, has authored multiple book chapters and publications, and has appeared in English and Spanish-language media.
Prior to joining the IHRC, she was the program coordinator of the Institute for Immigration Research at George Mason University. Prior to that, Waslin was a senior policy analyst at the American Immigration Council. Before that, Michele was the manager of the Immigration and the States project at the Pew Charitable Trusts and was director of immigration policy research at UnidosUS (previously the National Council of La Raza). Dr. Waslin holds a bachelor's degree in political science from Creighton University, a master's degree in international relations from the University of Chicago, and a PhD in government and international studies from the University of Notre Dame.
Job Titles:
- Distinguished McKnight University Professor, Department of Psychology and Director
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- Associate Dean for Research, Humphrey School of Public Affairs
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- Chairman and Professor, Department of History
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- Associate Professor, Curriculum and Instruction