Kevin Lujan Lee

Kevin Lujan Lee (familian Capili) is a Chamoru PhD candidate in urban planning and politics. Starting Fall 2023, he will be a Killam Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of British Columbia’s Department of Political Science; and starting Fall 2024, he will be an Assistant Professor of Indigenous Studies at the University of Buffalo.

Broadly interested in Indigenous politics and low-wage work, he is interested in the organizational processes through which Indigenous peoples and low-wage workers transform their workplaces, communities and policy environments. His dissertation is a cross-national, mixed-methods study of Pacific Islander community organizations in the United States and Aotearoa/New Zealand, and sheds light on the role of Indigenous culture in mediating key processes in Indigenous-led social movements––including group boundary work, rhetorical frames, brokerage and resource mobilization.

Kevin's research has been published in the fields of urban planning (Environment and Planning F, Planning Theory & Practice), political science (Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Politics) and Indigenous Studies (The Contemporary Pacific), and has received awards from the US Fulbright Program, the Labor Research and Action Network and the Western Political Science Association. For his teaching, he was awarded an MIT Graduate Student Council Teaching Award. 

He is a member of the Scholars Strategy Network, and a Research Affiliate with the MIT Data + Feminism Lab and Macquarie University's Centre for Global Indigenous Futures. Prior to MIT, Kevin worked as a food policy advocate, an undocumented youth organizer and a program assistant at a local mosque. He holds a B.A. in Philosophy and the Study of Religion from the University of California, Los Angeles, and an interdisciplinary M.A. from the University of Chicago.