Faculty Lead
Institution:
Assistant Professor of the History of Science (Medicine), Harvard University; Faculty Director, Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies Working Group
Interests:
History of medicine, race, and migration; political economy of care; postcolonial studies; globalization and health; immigrant physicians and U.S. healthcare; racial science and global health inequalities
Description:
Eram Alam is an Assistant Professor in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University whose research focuses on the history of medicine in the twentieth century, especially the intersections of globalization, race, migration, and health. Her first book, The Care of Foreigners: How Immigrant Physicians Changed US Healthcare (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025), analyzes how postcolonial physician migration from Asia to the United States—catalyzed by the 1965 Hart‑Celler Act—has made immigrant doctors indispensable to U.S. healthcare while channeling them into underserved and marginalized communities. She is also co‑editor (with Dorothy Roberts and others) of Ordering the Human: The Global Spread of Racial Science (Columbia University Press, 2024), a collection that examines how race functions as a political and scientific technology across global contexts and how racialized science shapes modern notions of human difference and inequality. Her next major project, The Logistical Body, explores how contemporary logistical regimes confront the limits posed by embodied labor, drawing on breakdowns exposed during the COVID‑19 pandemic.
Faculty Lead
Clinical Professor of Law Director, Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic
sardalan@law.harvard.edu
Institution:
Clinical Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program, Harvard Law School
Interests:
U.S. asylum and refugee law; international refugee and human rights law; immigration enforcement and due process; trauma, credibility, and evidence in asylum adjudication; gender‑based and family‑based persecution; labor migration; clinical legal education and interdisciplinary advocacy
Description:
Sabrineh Ardalan is a Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Faculty Director of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program, where she supervises students representing asylum seekers and other immigrants in trial‑level and appellate litigation, policy advocacy, and impact work challenging barriers to protection. She teaches courses on immigration, U.S. asylum law, international refugee law, international labor migration, and trauma and refugees, and has authored influential amicus briefs on cutting‑edge asylum issues submitted to the Board of Immigration Appeals, federal courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court. A graduate of Harvard Law School (J.D. 2002), she previously clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, and has helped lead national responses to restrictive asylum and border policies while developing interdisciplinary models that integrate social work into immigrant representation
Faculty Lead
Institution:
Lecturer in Latinx Studies, Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights (EMR), Harvard University; Faculty Director, Latinx Studies Working Group
Interests:
Latinx literature, culture, and visual arts; Black and Afrodiasporic studies; medical humanities; decolonial trauma theory; feminist and queer of color critique; Afro‑Latinidades and world diasporas; decolonial healing and resistance
Description:
Aitor Bouso‑Gavín is a Lecturer of Latinx Studies in Harvard’s Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights and faculty director of the Latinx Studies Working Group, whose research centers on U.S. Latinx and Caribbean literature, culture, and visual arts with a focus on how creative expression of internalized harm and trauma can become a catalyst for personal, political, and social healing. He completed his PhD in Hispanic Literatures and Linguistics at UMass Amherst in 2024 and has received multiple honors, including the 2023–24 Mellon Sawyer dissertation fellowship on Race and Visual Culture in the Americas and the 2023 Victoria Urbano award from the International Association of Gender and Sexuality Studies. His current book manuscript, Genealogies of the Wound: Decolonial Healing and Resistance in Caribbean and Latinx Literature and Arts, proposes the “wound” as an analytic and biomedical‑critical paradigm to foreground Caribbean and Latinx cultural production as a site for imagining alternative forms of healing and relationality beyond Western scientific and secular frameworks. In 2024 he launched the Afro‑Latinidades and World Diasporas Initiative at Harvard, which uses courses, public programs, and community‑engaged events to center Afro‑Latinx histories, arts, and politics and to build new pedagogies and solidarities across global Black and Latinx diasporas.
Faculty Lead
Gordon Hanson is the Peter Wertheim Professor in Urban Policy at Harvard Kennedy School (Remembrance for Peter Wertheim) and Academic Dean for Strategy and Engagement at Harvard Kennedy School.
Gordon_Hanson@hks.harvard.edu
Institution:
Peter Wertheim Professor in Urban Policy and Academic Dean for Strategy and Engagement, Harvard Kennedy School
Interests:
International trade and globalization; international migration; labor markets and regional inequality; economic geography; “China shock” and trade adjustment; offshoring and global value chains; skilled immigration and innovation; urban and regional economic development
Description:
Gordon H. Hanson is the Peter Wertheim Professor in Urban Policy and Academic Dean for Strategy and Engagement at Harvard Kennedy School, widely known for pioneering research on how globalization—especially trade with China—reshapes local labor markets and regional economies in the United States. An economist whose work spans trade, migration, and economic geography, he has published extensively in leading journals on topics ranging from the “China shock” and NAFTA to international migration and the long‑run determinants of comparative advantage, and he serves as a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and co‑editor or past co‑editor of several major economics journals.
Faculty Lead
Institution:
Lecturer/Advisor, Department of Economics, Harvard University
Interests:
Immigration and its effects on crime and family outcomes; impacts of immigration policy and enforcement; education economics; instructor quality and performance; student evaluations and bias
Description:
Anne Le Brun is a Lecturer/Advisor in Harvard’s Economics Department, where she teaches a course on immigration and a senior thesis research seminar and previously served as Head Section Leader for Ec 10 in 2015–16 and 2016–17. A labor economist, her research focuses on immigration—examining links between immigration and crime, how parents’ legal status shapes children’s outcomes, and how policy and enforcement affect immigrants and their families—as well as questions in education such as bias in student evaluations and how instructor performance influences students’ academic trajectories. She received a PhD in Economics from UC Berkeley in 2008, a Master’s in International Development from Harvard in 2002, and a BA from Swarthmore College in 1997, worked in finance from 1997 to 2000, and taught as a lecturer at Wellesley College from 2008 to 2012 before joining Harvard.
Faculty Lead
Institution:
Bae Family Professor of History; Radcliffe Alumnae Professor; Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Director, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Harvard University
Interests:
U.S. history; immigration history; Asian American history; race and xenophobia; law, gender, and society; digital humanities; public scholarship
Description:
Erika Lee is the Bae Family Professor of History, Radcliffe Alumnae Professor, and the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard University. She researches and teaches U.S. history with a focus on immigration and Asian American history and on the histories of race, xenophobia, law, gender, and society. A past president of the Organization of American Historians, she is the award‑winning author of several influential books, including At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882–1943, Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America (with Judy Yung), The Making of Asian America: A History, and America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States, as well as Made in Asian America: A History for Young People (with Christina Soontornvat.
Before joining Harvard, Lee was a Regents Professor and Director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota, where she co‑founded the digital humanities projects Immigrant Stories, #ImmigrationSyllabus, and Immigrants in COVID America. She has received numerous fellowships and honors, including an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, an honorary degree from Tufts University, the Immigrant Heritage Award from the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, the Pioneer Award from OCA – Asian Pacific American Advocates, and the Champion for Justice Award from the Chinese American Museum of Los Angeles. Recently elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the American Antiquarian Society, Lee is also a frequent public commentator whose media appearances include the PBS series “Asian Americans,” CNN, PBS NewsHour, NPR, and major national newspapers and magazines.
Faculty Lead
Institution:
Bae Family Professor of Government and Faculty Dean of Dunster House, Harvard University
Interests:
Race and ethnicity; public opinion and political behavior; immigration; identity and inequality; partisanship; political participation; deliberative and participatory democracy; social movements; social and health policy; financial regulation and economic policy; media and politics; Asian American politics; survey and experimental methods.
Description:
Taeku Lee is the Bae Family Professor of Government and Faculty Dean of Dunster House at Harvard University, where his work focuses on racial and ethnic politics, public opinion, political engagement, identity, and inequality. He is President of the American Political Science Association, Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as a 2024 Andrew Carnegie Fellow. His recent books include Race and Inequality in America (Cambridge University Press, 2025, with Zoltan Hajnal and Vincent Hutchings) and the forthcoming Billionaire Backlash (with Pepper Culpepper, Bloomsbury, 2026), which examines how corporate scandals can reshape democratic politics. Born in Masan, South Korea, and raised in Malaysia, New York City, and Michigan, he studied at the University of Michigan, Harvard, and the University of Chicago, and he frequently contributes to debates on race, democracy, and inequality in the United States.
Faculty Lead
Institution:
Assistant Professor of Government, Harvard University; Faculty Associate, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
Interests:
Political psychology of identity; ethnicity; immigration and internal migration; gender; political economy and development; public opinion; race and ethnicity; voter behavior; comparative and American politics
Description:
Mashail Malik is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Harvard University whose research examines how social identities shape political life, with a particular focus on ethnicity, immigration, and internal migration across contexts including Pakistan, Egypt, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Her current book project is an interdisciplinary, mixed‑methods study of the rise and fall of ethnic political parties in the megacity of Karachi, Pakistan, building on a dissertation that won both the American Political Science Association’s Urban Politics Section Best Dissertation Award and the Democracy & Autocracy Section Best Fieldwork Award. She received a PhD in political science from Stanford University, an MA in International Relations from the University of Chicago, and a BA in Economics and Philosophy from Beloit College, and she is a native of Islamabad, Pakistan.
Faculty Lead
Institution:
Jorge Paulo Lemann Associate Professor of Education and of Brazil Studies, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Interests:
Immigration and mobility; transnational parenting and family life across borders; gender; anthropology and education; educational trajectories of immigrant and first- and second-generation children; Brazilian migration; bilingual and dual-language education in the Americas
Description:
Gabrielle Oliveira is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Associate Professor of Education and of Brazil Studies at HGSE, where her research examines how people move, adapt, and parent across borders, merging anthropology and education through multi-sited ethnographic work in Mexico, the United States, and Brazil. She is the author of Motherhood Across Borders: Immigrants and Their Children in Mexico and New York (NYU Press, 2018), an award‑winning ethnography of Mexican transnational mothers and their children, and her broader scholarship explores the schooling experiences of immigrant children, families’ educational decision‑making during and after migration, and Brazilian immigrant communities navigating U.S. schools and dual‑language programs.
Faculty Lead
Institution:
Assistant Professor of Government, Harvard University
Interests:
Racial and ethnic politics in the United States; Latinx political behavior; immigration; policing; political psychology; migration; race and ethnicity; quantitative survey methods
Description:
Marcel Roman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Harvard University whose research focuses on racial and ethnic politics in the United States, especially Latinx political behavior, immigration, and policing. His book project, In the Shadow of Deportation: How Immigration Enforcement Shapes the Politics of Latinx Communities, uses more than a dozen representative Latinx surveys since 2007, along with experiments and large tracking polls, to show how increasingly restrictive immigration enforcement environments undermine conventional expectations of political assimilation with Anglo whites and instead foster distinct political commitments among Latinx communities. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a B.A. in political science from the University of Kentucky, and his published work examines how social ties to undocumented immigrants and contact with immigration enforcement shape Latinx political engagement and attitudes toward law enforcement.
Faculty Lead
Institution:
Assistant Clinical Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Health Law and Policy Clinic, Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, Harvard Law School
Interests:
Health law and policy, access to care for vulnerable populations, telehealth and digital health regulation, public health ethics, medical device and biotechnology regulation
Description:
Carmel Shachar is Assistant Clinical Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Health Law and Policy Clinic at the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation at Harvard Law School. Her scholarship focuses on law and health policy, particularly the regulation of access to care for vulnerable individuals, the use of telehealth and digital health products, and the application of public health ethics to real‑world questions. Her work has appeared in leading journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Nature Medicine, and the Journal of Law and the Biosciences, and she has been interviewed by outlets such as BBC News, Politico, CNN, and Slate. She has co‑edited several books on topics ranging from medical device regulation and consumer genetics to disability, health, law, bioethics, transparency in health care, and COVID‑19 and the law.
Previously, Shachar served as Executive Director of the Petrie‑Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, overseeing sponsored research, events, fellowships, student engagement, development, and major initiatives including the Health Care General Counsel Roundtable, the Center’s Advisory Board, and projects on precision medicine, artificial intelligence, and home diagnosis. Earlier in her career, she was a Clinical Instructor in the Health Law and Policy Clinic, where she helped lead access‑to‑care and Affordable Care Act implementation work, and she practiced health care law at Ropes & Gray LLP in Boston. She clerked for Judge Jacques L. Wiener of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Shachar graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and studied Bioethics and Religion at Wellesley College. She currently serves on the board of Fishing Partnership Support Services and on the Ethics Committee of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).
Faculty Lead
Institution:
Instructor, FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University; Director, FXB Center Program on Immigrants and Unhoused Communities
Interests:
Immigrant and refugee health; homelessness and health; immigrant mental health; community-based and culturally rooted models of care; asylum medicine and forensic evaluations; farmworker and migrant labor health; public and immigrant health policy
Description:
Margaret (Maggie) Sullivan is a nationally board‑certified family nurse practitioner, Instructor at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, and Director of the FXB Center Program on Immigrants and Unhoused Communities, where she leads initiatives to improve healthcare access and mental health support for immigrants and people experiencing homelessness. A Distinguished Fellow of the National Academies of Practice in Nursing and a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, she has provided primary care at Boston Health Care for the Homeless since 2009 and founded Oasis, an immigrant health clinic that connects unhoused immigrants with interdisciplinary, multilingual services. She co‑leads the Partnership for Community Mental Health and Immigrant Well‑being, conducts forensic medical evaluations for asylum through Harvard Medical School’s Asylum Clinic, and collaborates with community health centers and global partners to advance rights‑based, culturally grounded models of immigrant health care.
Faculty Lead
Institution:
Instructor and Research Associate, FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Director, FXB Center Program on Distress Migration; Director, FXB Summer Program on Migration and Refugee Rights
Interests:
Distress migration; child migration and protection; human trafficking; sexual exploitation of migrant children; victim blaming; migrant detention and children’s mental health; social and forensic psychology; human rights–based migration policy
Description:
Vasileia Digidiki is a social and forensic psychologist and Instructor at Harvard who leads the FXB Center’s research and training agenda on distress migration, directing both the FXB Program on Distress Migration and the FXB Summer Program on Migration and Refugee Rights. Her work focuses on the protection of migrant and refugee children, human trafficking, and the impacts of exclusionary migration policies, including producing the first worldwide report on child trafficking for the International Organization for Migration and co‑authoring influential studies on unaccompanied minors, migrant detention, and child rights.
Faculty Lead
Institution:
Faculty Chair, Committee on Ethnicity, Migration & Rights; Senior Lecturer in Peninsular and Transatlantic Film and Literature, Harvard University
Interests:
Migration and border studies; transatlantic cultural history and literature; Peninsular Spanish cultural studies; film and media studies; Mediterranean crossings; gender studies; digital humanities; narratives of identity, memory, forgetting, and exile; intersections between art and literature; global mobility; transnational cultural products
Description:
Raquel Vega‑Durán is Faculty Chair of the Committee on Ethnicity, Migration & Rights and a Senior Lecturer in Peninsular and Transatlantic Film and Literature at Harvard University. Her research explores migration and border studies, contemporary Spanish cultural history, film and media, Mediterranean crossings, gender, and narratives of identity, memory, and exile, with particular attention to how encounters with migrants reshape Spain’s self‑understanding within a broader European context. She is the author of Emigrant Dreams, Immigrant Borders: Migrants, Transnational Encounters, and Identity in Spain, which examines how Spain’s cultural identity is transformed through its engagements with migrants from Latin America and Africa, and she has published widely on Spanish literature, film, refugees, activism, and global mobility in edited volumes and journals.
Faculty Lead
Institution:
John L. Loeb Professor of Sociology and PVK Professor of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University
Interests:
Social demography; race and ethnic relations; social stratification; immigration; racial and ethnic identity; measurement of race and ethnicity; impacts of natural disasters
Description:
Mary C. Waters is the John L. Loeb Professor of Sociology at Harvard University and the PVK Professor of Arts and Sciences. She specializes in the study of immigration, inter‑group relations, the formation of racial and ethnic identity among the children of immigrants, the challenges of measuring race and ethnicity, and the longitudinal impact of natural disasters. Waters received a BA in Philosophy from Johns Hopkins University, an MA in Demography, and an MA and PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, and has taught at Harvard since 1986, serving as chair of the Sociology Department from 2001 to 2005. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and three children.
