Pei-te Lien

Professor Lien
Professor
Diversity Advocate

Office Hours

In person or via Zoom
Tuesdays from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM
By Appointment
Zoom link: https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/6927442606

Contact Phone

805-769-8445

Office Location

Ellison 3709

Specialization

American Politics, Identity, Asian American Politics, U.S. Racial and Ethnic Politics, Public Opinion and Political Behavior

 

Ph.D., University of Florida, 1995

Education

Ph.D., University of Florida, 1995

 

Bio

Professor Lien’s primary research interest is the political participation and representation of Asian and other nonwhite Americans. Most of her recent work examines the intersection of race, ethnicity, gender, and nativity in political behavior, both of the elites and the mass. She is the 2023 recipient of the Don T. Nakanishi Award for Distinguished Scholarship and Service in Asian Pacific American Politics, the Western Political Science Association. This national award is also given for her new book Contending the Last Frontier: Race, Gender, Ethnicity, and Political Representation of Asian Americans (Oxford UP, 2022). She is a co-principal investigator of the Gender and Multicultural Leadership project http://www.gmcl.org and a co-author of Contested Transformation: Race, Gender, and Political Leadership in 21st Century America (Cambridge UP, 2016) based on this project which won the 2017 Distinguished Career Book Award from the American Political science Association (APSA) Section on Race, Ethnicity, and Politics. The dataset is available online as ICPSR Study No. 36826. In 2018, she co-edited with Andrew Aoki for the Politics, Groups, and Identities a special issue on Asian Pacific American Studies (6:3), which has since been published as a book Asian Pacific American Politics—Celebrating the Scholarly Legacy of Don T. Nakanishi (Routledge 2020) after adding additional articles curated from the journal. 

 

In addition to numerous journal articles and book chapters, Lien has published four other book titles.  The Making of Asian America Through Political Participation (Temple UP, 2001), received the 2002 best book award on political participation, voting, elections, and political behavior from the American Political Science Association's Division on Race, Ethnicity, and Politics. The Politics of Asian Americans: Diversity and Community (Routledge, 2004), coauthored with M. Margaret Conway and Janelle Wong, is based on her National Science Foundation-sponsored Pilot National Asian American Political Survey (SES-9973435). The dataset is available online as ICPSR Study No. 3832.  Co-edited with Chris Collet, The Transnational Politics of Asian Americans (Temple UP, 2009) explores the world of political transnationalism regarding various Asian American groups.

 

Lien is the President of the Western Political Science Association (WPSA) in 2022-23, having served as the Vice President and Program Chair of its 2022 Annual Meeting in Portland, OR, March 10-12. She also co-chaired the 2022 Annual Meeting of the APSA in Montreal, CAN, September 14-18. Earlier, Lien served as co-President and program co-chair of the Race, Ethnicity, and Politics Section of the APSA and was on the APSA Council and the WPSA Council. She is a founding co-chair of the Asian Pacific American Caucus, a related group of the APSA. She is also a founding member of the APSA Committee on the Status of Asian Americans and the APSA Committee on First Generation Americans. At the WPSA, she helped establish and chair its Status Committee on Asian Pacific Americans in the Profession. She served on the editorial boards of the American Political Science Review, PolityPolitics and Gender, and Journal of Women, Politics & Policy and was an associate editor of Politics, Groups and Identities, a journal of the WPSA.

Publications

(Selected most recent three years)

Lien, Pei-te, and Nicole Filler. 2022. Contesting the Last Frontier: Race, Gender, Ethnicity, and Political Representation of Asian Americans. New York: Oxford University Press. ((Winner of the 2023 Don T. Nakanishi Award, Western Political Science Association)

Lien, Pei-te. 2021. “Tracing Roots of Attitudes toward Race and Affirmative Action among Immigrant Chinese Americans: Learning from Undergraduate International Students.” Journal of Diversity in Higher Education 15(6): 731-743. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/dhe0000319

Takeda, Okiyoshi, Pei-te Lien, and Sara Sadhwani. 2021. “The Study of Asian American Politics: Looking Back, Looking Forward.” PS: Political Science & Politics 54(2): 226–28. doi:10.1017/S1049096520001924.

Lien, Pei-te, Loan Le, Okiyoshi Takeda, Sara Sadhwani, and Andrew L. Aoki. 2021. “Are Asian Americans a Meaningful Political Community?” PS: Political Science & Politics 54(2): 232–34. doi:10.1017/S1049096520001961.

Feng, Jeff, and Pei-te Lien. 2020. “How AAPIs in Congress Responded to COVID-19.” AAPI-Nexus Journal: Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Policy, Practice, and Community 17(1/2): 289-330.

Aoki, Andrew, and Pei-te Lien. Eds. 2020. Asian Pacific American Politics—Celebrating the Scholarly Legacy of Don T. Nakanishi. New York: Routledge.

 

Courses

Undergraduate

 

PS 15

Introduction to Research in Political Science

PS 160 

Asian American Politics 

PS 161

U.S. Minority Politics

PS 166

U.S. Immigration Policy and Politics 

PS 196

Senior Seminar in Political Science

 

 

Graduate

 

PS 503

Directed Research on Dissertation Prospectus

PS 263

Seminar on Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in American Politics