Ayanna Yonemura

An accomplished educator, lecturer, author, and researcher, Ayanna Yonemura, Ph.D. dedicates much of her time to completing the manuscript for her book, Assimilating Places: The Resettlement of Japanese Americans. Ayanna Yonemura, Ph.D. attended the University of California Santa Cruz, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts in German Studies in 1994. During her time as an undergraduate student, Ayanna Yonemura, Ph.D. served as a Teaching Assistant for multiple courses, including “Third World Cinemas and the West,” and “Introduction to Feminism.”

Ayanna Yonemura, Ph.D. also acted as a Student Representative to the Narrative Evaluations Committee for two years and as a Student Union Assembly Member, representing Crown College for one year. An exemplary student, Ayanna Yonemura, Ph.D. received the Göttingen Contact Scholarship from Georg-August-Universität Göttingen in 1992 and earned UC Santa Cruz Council of Provosts Grants in 1992 and 1993. In 1994, Ayanna Yonemura, Ph.D. completed her Bachelor’s thesis, “Political Asylum in Contemporary Germany: An Interweaving of Racism and Nationalism,” and received a grant from the institution’s Council of Provosts to self-publish her work.

An excerpt from her thesis also appeared in the UC Santa Cruz Third World and Native American Students Collective Press, and Dorn, a journal in Göttingen, Germany, published the paper as a series from 1994 to 1995. Following the completion of her undergraduate studies, Ayanna Yonemura, Ph.D. enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles, and earned her Master of Arts in African Studies in 1996.

In the late 1990s, Ayanna Yonemura, Ph.D. received a National Fellowship from the U.S. Government Civil Liberties Public Education Fund. Also at UCLA, she completed her Doctor of Philosophy in Urban Planning in 2001. Ayanna Yonemura, Ph.D. earned two Fulbright Fellowships: one to Eritrea in 2002 and one to Germany in 2005. She initiated her tenure-track career in 2002 with an Assistant Professor of Urban Studies & Planning and Asian American Studies position at California State University, Northridge.

In 2004, Ayanna Yonemura, Ph.D. joined the faculty at Loyola Marymount University as an Assistant Professor of Urban Studies and Sociology. In 2006, the scholar taught graduate students at the University of Southern California in the Master of Planning program.