Michael Jin

Michael Jin

Michael Jin’s research focuses on migration, diasporas and racial formation across North America, East Asia and transpacific borderlands.

His book, “Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless: A Japanese American Diaspora in the Pacific,” uncovers the stories of more than 50,000 U.S.-born Japanese Americans in the former Japanese colonial world in Asia who drew the U.S. West into the more extensive histories of nations and empires in the Pacific before, during and after World War II.

His current research on Korean atomic bomb survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki highlights the long-term impacts of Japanese colonialism, U.S. militarism and Cold War geopolitics, and the ongoing struggles for compensatory justice and redress.

Jin has worked with the Newberry Teachers’ Consortium, the Organization of American Historians, the National Japanese American Historical Society, and other organizations to develop curriculum-building and teacher education programs focusing on ethnic studies and Asian American history for K-12 teachers. He has served in the Advisory Group for the implementation of the 2021 Teaching Equitable Asian American Community History (TEAACH) Act, which made Illinois the first state to require the teaching of Asian American history in public schools.

Languages spoken: English, Korean and Japanese