AJ Kim Named 2025–26 Stanford Humanities Center Fellow

AJ Kim, associate professor in the School of Public Affairs at San Diego State University, has been named a 2025–26 External Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center, a prestigious honor in the humanities and interpretive social sciences.

Kim, a faculty member in SDSU’s Department of City Planning in the School of Public Affairs, was selected from a national pool of scholars for their project, Mapping the Immigrant Rights Movement in the American South. 

As one of eight External Faculty Fellows, Kim will spend the 2025–26 academic year in residence at the Center, pursuing their research in the collaborative and interdisciplinary environment for which the Stanford Humanities Center is known. 

"I'm excited to be in residence with outstanding colleagues at the Stanford Humanities Center this coming year and very grateful for the Center's support to complete my book, The Unauthorized City,” Kim said. 

Kim’s work is among nearly 50 other research endeavors across disciplines with fellows ranging from undergraduate students to tenured faculty. 

“The opportunity to workshop and dialogue with faculty, students, and staff at the Center will be incredibly valuable, and is timely, as my book examines immigrants’ and refugees' nuanced navigation of various urban planning processes and mechanisms, as well as creation of alternative social and public health services, during and across especially fraught times of conflict around immigration policy between cities, states, and nations."

While at Staford, Kim will be participating in weekly seminars, lectures, and collaborative events. The fellowship includes funding support made possible by generous contributions from individuals, foundations, and federal agencies, including the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The Stanford Humanities Center, founded in 1980, serves as a hub for advanced humanities research. It supports scholars through a range of fellowships, seminars and public programs. According to SHC Director Roland Greene, the 2025–26 fellows were selected for their scholarly excellence and the potential for their projects to stimulate interdisciplinary exchange.

“Each year we continue to diversify our fellowship community and find new ways of supporting advanced research,” Greene said. “It’s particularly gratifying to select fellows whose projects seem likely to complement one another.”

Kim is a queer trans scholar and community organizer, and a kid of immigrants. They have worked with immigrant rights and environmental justice organizations nationally and internationally for over twenty years. They have a Ph.D. in Urban Planning (UCLA) and a Master’s degree in Ethnic Studies (UCSD). 

They have led participatory planning activities in immigrant-dense suburbs of Los Angeles, Atlanta, and San Diego, specifically focused on the informal and formal efforts of unauthorized immigrants and refugees working to create safer communities for all across multiple levels of scale and governance. Kim is an associate professor of City Planning in the School of Public Affairs, with affiliations in the Graduate School of Public Health and LGBTQ+ Studies at San Diego State University. 

Kim’s selection for this fellowship underscores the increasing academic recognition of research focused on the lived experiences of immigrant communities. Their book, The Unauthorized City, is about how undocumented/unauthorized immigrants navigate various urban and suburban structures from the enclave to the ethnoburb in Atlanta, Los Angeles, and New York as a form of survivance, and future planning is forthcoming.  

For more information, visit the Stanford Humanities Center or the SDSU School of Public Affairs.