Erika Lee

Erika Lee is a Regents Professor of History and Asian American Studies, a Distinguished McKnight University Professor, the Rudolph J. Vecoli Chair in Immigration History, and Director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota. She is the recipient of multiple fellowships, grants, and awards and is the author of four award-winning books: At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943 (University of North Carolina Press, 2003), Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America (co-authored with Judy Yung, Oxford University Press, 2010), The Making of Asian America: A History (Simon & Schuster, 2015, Chinese version, 2019), and America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States (Basic Books, 2019). As the Director of the Immigration History Research Center, she has founded and launched a number of digital humanities projects that advance research and public engagement around issues of migration and race. These include the Immigrants in COVID America project (immigrantcovid.umn.edu), which documents the social, economic, and health impact on immigrants and refugees in the United States and is supported by the Social Science Research Council; the Immigrant Stories Project, which works with recent immigrants and refugees to collect, preserve, and share their experiences with a multi-lingual digital story-telling website and collection created with the support from the National Endowment for the Humanities; and the #ImmigrationSyllabus, a digital educational resource offering historical perspectives to contemporary immigration debates. A 2018 Carnegie Fellow, Lee is a frequent commentator in the media and serves as the Vice President of the Organization of American Historians.