Ga Young Chung is an assistant professor in the Department of Asian American Studies with an affiliation in Cultural Studies. With interdisciplinary specializations in transnational and comparative methodologies in the study of race, youth, and citizenship, she brings to society a perspective steeped in a commitment to equity and social justice. Chung has researched the undocumented Korean immigrant youth activism while working collaboratively with Korean American organizations. In her academic projects, she examines how citizenship's meanings and practices have been reassembled and rearticulated in Asia-Pacific. Informed by critical race theory, education studies, and youth studies, her work is dedicated to expanding Asian American studies in the era of the uneven globalization.

David de la Peña is an Associate Professor of Human Ecology and Director of the Program in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Design. As a licensed architect and urban designer, his research and creative work are focused on community engagement in the design, creation and management of pubic spaces. He is particularly interested in support mechanisms for self-built and managed urban spaces, and he regularly collaborates on participatory projects in the Sacramento region as well as internationally. He has authored numerous articles and book chapters on participatory urbanism, and is co-author of the recent book Design as Democracy: Techniques for Collective Creativity. He received his Master of Architecture from the UT Austin, and a Master of Urban Design and PhD in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning from UC Berkeley. 

Valerie Eviner is a professor of Ecosystem Management and Restoration in the Department of Plant Sciences. Much of her research is in collaboration with diverse land managers to simultaneously address holes in our fundamental ecological understanding, and key challenges in ecosystem management, including: plant invasions, conservation of native plant communities, ecosystem services, restoration, and resilience of ecosystems to multiple environmental changes. She works closely with bridge organizations and government agencies to integrate the most recent scientific insights into policies affecting the environment and sustainable land management.

Milmon F. Harrison, Ph.D. (Sociology) is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work focuses on the experience of people of African descent in the context of the continental United States. Using qualitative and digital humanities-based approaches, his work engages questions of race, religion, public policy, socioeconomic and geographic mobility, and the telling of stories about all of the above. He is the author of the book Righteous Riches: the Word of Faith Movement in Contemporary African American Religion (Oxford), the first book-long scholarly treatment of the Prosperity Gospel Movement in the United States. His latest book project is titled “The Sunset Limited: California Stories of the Great Black Migration, 1940s-1970s.” He is an Associate Professor in the Department of African American and African Studies. 

Professor Irene Joe recently completed her fourth year as a tenure-track professor at UC Davis School of Law where she teaches courses on Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, and Professional Responsibility. Professor Joe writes at the intersection of all three of these areas with a special focus on how the design of the criminal process affects the ability of institutional attorneys to manage overwhelming caseloads and comply with ethical requirements. Her work has been published in a number of highly regarded journals including the UCLA Law Review, Boston University Law Review, the UC Davis Law Review, and the California Law Review. Her most recent project, titled Structuring the Public Defenders and forthcoming in the Iowa Law Review, questions how a state decision about whether to house the provision of public defender services in the executive, judicial, or neither branch of state government affects the institution's efficacy. 

Keith David Watenpaugh is Professor and Founding Director of Human Rights Studies at UC Davis. His studies the history, theory and criticism of humanitarianism at its intersection with the practice of human rights. He is a pioneer in the field of higher education in emergencies, with a primary focus on improving refugee higher education opportunity. He serves as director of the UC Davis Article 26 Backpack project, which began with support from the Ford Foundation and seeks to ensure universal academic access and mobility, especially for those displaced by war or violence.. He is author most recently of the award-winning Bread from Stones: The Middle East and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism (California, 2015). His current work imagines a global history of humanitarianism from below, and he is finishing the book, Most Human: Storytelling, Star Trek and Human Rights.