UC Santa Barbara has received a grant of $225,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to launch a Sawyer Seminar entitled “Race, Precarity, and Privilege: Migration in a Global Context.”

Established in 1994 to provide support for comparative research and intellectual exchange in the humanities and social sciences, the Mellon Foundation’s Sawyer Seminars act as temporary research centers. UC Santa Barbara is one of only 10 universities worldwide to receive this award in 2020.

The principal investigators for this seminar include Jean Beaman, associate professor of sociology; France Winddance Twine, professor of sociology; John S.W. Park, professor of Asian American studies; Kim Yasuda, professor of art; and Lisa Parks, professor of film and media studies. It will be housed in The Migration Initiative at UC Santa Barbara, which also will be instrumental in organizing the series as it take place over the next academic year.

“This prestigious award, won by five stellar faculty members, embodies every important principle that the Division of Social Sciences seeks to practice and uphold,” said Dean Charles Hale. “It is broadly collaborative across disciplinary boundaries; groundbreaking in scholarly focus, ethically and politically engaged with a pressing social problem; and it opens new terrain of pedagogic innovation.”

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