Yung-Yi Diana Pan is Director of the American Studies Program, and Associate Professor of Sociology at City University of New York, Brooklyn College. She is also affiliated with the sociology department at the The Graduate Center.  A 1.5-generation immigrant from Taiwan, who grew up in predominantly white Oregon, Diana has been interested in issues of racial inequalities for as long as she can remember. 
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Inspired by her childhood in Oregon -- and experiences after living in California, and New York -- Diana's work broadly focus on the experiences of nonwhites in white spaces. Her first book, Incidental Racialization (Temple University Press, 2017), examines how Asian American and Latinx law students are racialized as a part of their professional socialization. Extending that project, Diana's current research interrogates how race matters for professionals with a focus on doctors, lawyers, and professors. She is also in the nascent stages of a collaborative project with her sister, a talented tattoo artist, that explores addiction recovery and family. 
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Diana regularly teaches theory, methods, and race and ethnicity courses. She formerly served in the following leadership roles at CUNY and Brooklyn College: Interim Executive Director of the Asian American/Asian Research Institute (AAARI) - CUNY;  Faculty Associate Dean for the School of Humanities and Social Sciences - Brooklyn College, Undergraduate Deputy Chair for the Department of Sociology - Brooklyn College, and co-chair of the Asian American Faculty and Staff Association - Brooklyn College. 
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As a first-generation college student, Diana financed her own education -- from college through graduate school -- with financial aid (and is quite familiar with all things FAFSA). She is an alumna of the Ronald E. McNair Predoctoral Scholars program, and the CSU Sally E. Casanova Predoctoral program. Diana earned her BA in Ethnic Studies and Political Science from Oregon State University, MA in Ethnic Studies from San Francisco State University, and PhD in Sociology from University of California, Irvine. 
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After living in cities for 15 years, Diana now resides just north of NYC with her family where she practices public sociology through community engagement by volunteering for numerous school committees, coaching little league softball, and being a part of local racial and social justice efforts, including serving on the Westchester County Asian American Advisory Board (appointed by the County Executive).
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