Håfa adai! I’m Kevin, a Chamoru (familian Capili) urban planner and sociologist of Indigenous politics. Driven by the overarching goal of understanding of the distinctive dynamics and dimensions of contemporary Indigenous social movements in Turtle Island and Oceania, my current research focuses on (1) the politics of Indigenous anticolonial nationalisms in Guåhan and the Mariånas archipelago; (2) Pacific Islander social movements in the continental United States; (3) Indigenous Oceanic political thought, in collaboration with Josh Campbell (UCLA); and (4) Indigenous and participatory action research methodologies.

My research has been published or is forthcoming in the fields of urban planning (Environment and Planning F, Journal of Race, Ethnicity and the City, Planning Theory & Practice), political science (Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Politics), Indigenous studies (The Contemporary Pacific, Wíčazo Ša Review, American Indian Culture and Research Journal), and other interdisciplinary fields of contemporary political critique (Global Intellectual History, South Atlantic Quarterly, Amerasia). Building on past experiences as an undocumented youth organizer and longtime research consultant at the UCLA Labor Center, I also maintain long-standing research interests in low-wage work and migration, although these have taken a backseat in recent years.

My community-engaged research has received awards from the American Sociological Association’s Indigenous Peoples and Native Nations Section and the Western Political Science Association, and my work has been supported by the American Political Science Association, Labor Research and Action Network, UB Gender Institute, and the US Fulbright Program, among others. For my teaching, I was awarded an MIT Graduate Student Council Teaching Award in 2021, presented annually to an instructor per school for “excellence in teaching a graduate-level course."

Currently, I am an Assistant Professor of Indigenous Studies at the University at Buffalo. I am also affiliated with the University of Michigan’s Phillip J. Bowman Center for Scholarship to Practice and University of British Columbia’s Centre for Migration Studies. Before coming to Seneca territories, I was a Killam Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of British Columbia’s Department of Political Science. I hold a PhD in Urban Planning and Politics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an interdisciplinary MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, and a BA in Philosophy and the Study of Religion from UCLA.

Let’s talk story!

At core, I’m an organizer first. I love connecting with others, learning from their wisdom, and co-conspiring to tackle pertinent and persistent social problems impacting marginalized peoples.