Stacey Lee comes from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Educational Policy Studies where she taught for more than a decade. An educational anthropologist, her research focuses on identity formation among Asian American students, including the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender and class. Lee is an expert on the education and socialization of the Hmong, a Southeast Asian ethnic group that has traditionally been misunderstood and underserved by American educators. Most recently she has conducted ethnographic research on first- and second-generation Hmong American high school students. Lee is the author of Up Against Whiteness: Race, School, and Immigrant Youth, (Teachers College Press, 2005), which looks at the role that education plays in shaping immigrant students’ identities. Her previous book, Unraveling the Model-Minority Stereotype: Listening to Asian American Youth (Teachers College Press, 1996) — which won the National Association of Multicultural Education’s Book Award — examines the power structures of American society and the ways in which they work to disadvantage Asian-American students.  Lee is an active member of the American Educational Research Association and recently chaired their special interest group on research and education of Asian and Pacific Americans. She earned an A.B. in political science from Vassar College in 1984, an M.A. in political science from New York University in 1985, and a Ph.D. in the anthropology of education from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991.

Photo: University of Wisconsin, Madison