We thank a number of UCLA faculty who have made significant contributions to the International Institute.
UCLA International Institute, September 10, 2025 — As the new academic year begins, the International Institute would like to thank several UCLA faculty for their dedicated service to the institute, all of whose terms came to a close at the end of the 2024–25 academic year.
Jennifer Chun, professor of Asian American studies and labor studies, completed a three-year appointment as chair of the international development studies (IDS) program at the end of June. Patrick Heuveline, professor of sociology with a joint appointment in the International Institute, will become the new IDS chair effective January 1, 2026, following a six-month period in which Mike Thies, institute associate vice provost, will serve as interim chair. Chun will continue to teach in the IDS program this year, where she remains a favorite professor among our students, particularly for her teaching of the core course, “Culture, Power and Development.”
Under Chun’s dedicated leadership, the IDS program strengthened its curricular foundation and course sequencing to support the vibrant interdisciplinary major. She led the program through an eight-year Academic Senate program review and completed a comprehensive self-study that included an overview of the IDS major, its faculty and teaching activities and its academic support staff, as well as the strengths, limitations and future goals of the undergraduate curriculum. Her efforts ensured that the interdisciplinary major offers undergraduate students the opportunity to study, analyze and critically assess the complex dynamics of development, inequality and poverty across the Global North and Global South.
Inmaculada García-Sánchez, professor of social research methodology at the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies, concluded a three-year term as associate director of the Center for the Study of International Migration (CSIM) on June 30, 2025. She will continue her service as chair of CSIM’s faculty advisory committee and as the institute’s community engagement advisor.
As CSIM associate director, García-Sánchez helped keep the busy center running smoothly, organizing events, hosting speakers, liaising with graduate students and working closely with associated center faculty. Last year alone, CSIM organized and/or cosponsored over 15 events, including a faculty panel on immigration and the 2024 presidential election, 10 book talks, and presentations on migration, citizenship, labor mobilization and migrant kinship networks in such countries as Austria, Spain, Europe, South Korea, Thailand and Italy.
Andrea Goldman, associate professor of history, served as interim director of the Asian Pacific Center (APC) for the 2024–25 academic year. Goldman supported the hardworking staff of the APC in keeping the busy center functioning smoothly. APC organized and/or cosponsored over 45 public events and two professional development workshops for K–12 teachers over the course of the year, and hosted multiple visiting scholars and graduate researchers.
Events spanned lectures, conferences, fellowship information sessions, a graduate symposium and presentations on the culture and politics of countries and regions throughout the Asia Pacific, including China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, Vietnam and Taiwan. Of note were a lecture on Uighur language education in the diaspora and two book talks by journalists Edward Wong and Peter Hessler, respectively. The Taiwan in the World lecture series, Global Chinese Philanthropy Initiative and Central Asian Program remained key components of the center’s programming.
Kristofer Kersey, associate professor of art history, concluded a year as interim associate director of the Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies. During his tenure at the center, programming explored a wide range of cultural themes, including modern Japanese architecture, science fiction films, classical Japanese poetry, haiku, the career of modern dancer Ito Michio and the influence of classical Greek culture on contemporary Japan.
A symposium on teaching Japanese tea and a lecture on the history and multiple uses of the term “fascism” were among the many other significant programs offered by the center over the past year.
Mark Kligman, professor of Jewish music, musicology, ethnomusicology and the humanities, served as interim director of the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies from January through the end of June 2025. Kligman worked with the staff of the Nazarian Center to maintain a robust program of teaching, public programs and student engagement, including ensuring progress on re-establishing the Israel studies minor at UCLA.
His work spanned center sponsorship of multiple undergraduate courses about Israel, suppor for student fellows and the hosting of significant public programs, such as a three-part webinar series with the Tel Aviv University’s Alliance Center for Iranian Studies. Kligman also contributed to an expanded array of cultural events at the Nazarian center, including concerts featuring, respectively, Israeli art songs and the Israeli music group Miqedem, as well as lectures on music in Israel.
Jorge Marturano, associate professor of Latin American and Caribbean studies in the department of Spanish and Portuguese, of which he is now chair, brought his five-year term as director of the Program on Caribbean Studies (PoCS) to a close on June 30. Under Marturano’s leadership, PoCS — part of the Latin American Institute — offered a broad slate of programming that addressed the varied histories, cultures, economics and politics of Caribbean nations and peoples.
He organized and cosponsored events that addressed such subjects as Haiti’s contemporary political crisis, the Haitian revolution, Cuban literature and film, Black women labor on the Panama Canal and Latin American and Caribbean feminism. Marturano’s focus on the shared experience of slavery, colonialism and imperialism on both sides of the Caribbean Sea, and in both Spanish- and French-speaking cultures, regularly brought together faculty and graduate students from multiple disciplines whose research concerns the unique history and contributions of the region. Finally, with the support of the Manuel Pedro Gonzalez Endowment in Caribbean Studies, PoCS provided seven grants for a total of $13,000 to support graduate student summer research.
Shaina Potts, associate professor, geography and the International Institute, and incoming chair of the institute’s global studies program, finished a one-year term as the institute’s equity advisor on June 30. During her tenure, Potts worked with David Kim, the institute’s associate vice provost, and Inmaculada García-Sánchez, community engagement advisor, to organize the successful 2025 event, “How Do Community-Engaged Research Practices Strengthen Transnational Solidarities?”
The event in late spring of this year brought together institute students, staff and professors to discuss the ways in which their community research projects forged links between local and global experiences of socioeconomic development, political democratization, public health and educational outreach.
Roger Waldinger, distinguished professor of sociology and founding director of the Center for the Study of International Migration since 2015, ended his leadership of the center (and its predecessor, the Program on International Migration) after almost two decades of service. Waldinger’s term as director reflected a dedicated effort to build a campus-wide interdisciplinary community of migration scholars based on an interdisciplinary perspective on migration studies that reflects the boundary-crossing nature of the phenomenon itself. Working in tandem with the center’s successive associate directors, Marjorie Elaine and Inmaculada García-Sánchez, together with the center’s faculty advisory committee, he positioned CSIM as a bridge for migration scholars who have different disciplinary and institutional commitments at UCLA and beyond, but share a common intellectual interest.
Anchoring CSIM in an intellectual agenda established by UCLA faculty, Waldinger made the support of graduate students and the emergence of a new generation of migration scholars among the center’s top priorities. Throughout his years as director, the center has maintained an intense level of activity, involving seminars, conferences and graduate student workshops. Particular highlights of recent years include two international conferences on forced migration; the convocation of a series of interdisciplinary “Emerging Immigration Scholars” conferences for early-career migration researchers; and the initiation of robust remote programming that features migration scholars from around the world speaking about their recently published books. Online programming at CSIM first emerged during 2020–21 as a collaborative effort between the migration centers at UCLA and UC San Diego, and continues to supplement in-person programming with the additional participation of migration centers at UC Berkeley and UC Davis.
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The International Institute is deeply grateful to all of these UCLA faculty members for their hard work and many contributions to the intellectual life and operations of the institute, its centers and programs and academic degree programs. We are indeed fortunate to work with such talented and dedicated scholars on international research, education and community engagement.
See recent article on new faculty leaders at the institute.
Published: Wednesday, September 10, 2025
