Laureen Hom
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Associate Professor
ORCID: 0000-0001-7450-5229 |
Current Research Activities
As an interdisciplinary scholar, Laureen's research and teaching are at the intersection of urban studies, ethnic studies, public administration, and public policy. Her expertise is in qualitative methods, and she uses critical frameworks to examine community development, gentrification, participatory democracy, and neighborhood politics in racialized spaces, with a particular focus on the Asian American experience in California. Her research projects have examined gentrification politics in Los Angeles Chinatown; the growth of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities across Orange County, California; and the history of the Chinese Hospital in San Francisco Chinatown. Her current work continues to examine Asian American place-based, grassroots organizing and the institutionalization and neoliberalization of community development approaches.
Prior to her academic career, Laureen worked in program management, evaluation, and community-engaged collaborative research in health services and non-profit organizations serving unhoused and immigrant communities in San Francisco and New York. She currently sits on the board of the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California and is a member of the Los Angeles Chinatown Community Land Trust.
Laureen's work has been featured in peer-reviewed journals spanning different disciplines, including Asian American studies, political science, public administration, public health, sociology, urban planning, and urban studies. She has also co-authored reports and practiioner essays on various policy issues facing Asian American communities, including civil rights, education, public health, and urban development/revitalization projects. In June 2024, she published her book with UC Press, The Power of Chinatown: Searching for Spatial Justice in Los Angeles, which was based on her ethnographic research on community politics and gentrification in Los Angeles Chinatown since the 1970s.
