FOUNDATIONS FOR CHANGE: Thomas I. Yamashita Fellowship

About the FOUNDATIONS FOR CHANGE: Thomas I. Yamashita Fellowship

The FOUNDATIONS FOR CHANGE: Thomas I. Yamashita Graduate Fellowship is awarded annually to an outstanding UC Berkeley doctoral student doing research on social change.  The fellowship is awarded as part of ISSI's Graduate Fellows Program (there is no separate application process) and goes to a Graduate Fellow  whose work transforms the existing social landscape - often in subtle and previously unappreciated ways - and serves as a bridge between the academy and the community.  Awardees are selected based on their work to build the capacity of community-based organizations and social movements to confront pressing issues by applying their academic expertise. Simultaneously, the awardee is someone with a track record of contributing to academic scholarship by sharing the insights and knowledge produced from community engagement with the broader academic community.  

About Thomas I. Yamashita

Thomas Isao Yamashita was an undergraduate student in civil engineering at the University of California at Berkeley and a member of the class of 1942. He was one of the first Asian Americans elected to two of the University of California’s honor societies—Winged Helmet and the Order of the Golden Bear. The internment of Americans of Japanese descent on the West Coast of the United States in 1942 made it impossible for him to graduate from Berkeley. He eventually received his engineering degree from the University of Nebraska. Even so, Tom supported and cherished the University of California at Berkeley and was a life member of the Alumni Association.

As a civil engineer, Tom spent the majority of his career in Hong Kong. His work did not involve building the structures that typify its landscape. His work was unseen, focusing on foundations, on solving the complex engineering problems that enable steel and glass towers to be built. His work made possible the transportation corridors that allowed the city to become a regional economic hub. Through his leadership, Tom developed new construction techniques that altered the practice of building. His work changed the city’s landscape. In this spirit of engineering the foundations of change, this fellowship supports transformative work that alters the social landscape, often in subtle and previously unappreciated ways.

2026-2028 FOUNDATIONS FOR CHANGE: Thomas I. Yamashita Fellow

headshot of Edward MartinEdward Martin is a PhD candidate in Geography at the University of California, Berkeley. His research explores how abolitionist activists build non-carceral forms of safety through community mental health initiatives. His current project examines the relationship between abolitionist organizing practices and community mental health alternatives to incarceration in Oakland, California. Through this research, he aims to understand how tensions between carceral logics and abolitionist organizing practices shape the forms of care and safety available to Oakland residents. Drawing on the principles of community-engaged research, his methods emphasize building relationships with system-impacted families and community organizers as a foundation for both producing knowledge and sustaining community organizing efforts.

Prior to beginning his PhD at UC Berkeley, he completed an MSc in Migration, Mobility and Development at SOAS University of London, where he studied intra-African migration to Morocco, the country in which he grew up.

photo of Thomas Yamashita

Thomas Yamashita