Derek Wu is a PhD candidate in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley (Designated Emphasis in Global Metropolitan Studies) broadly exploring the effects of race and class inequalities on democracy in cities. His dissertation project uses archival work and more than 75 ethnographic interviews spanning five languages to explore how community organizing practices changed after the 1960s in an extremely diverse neighborhood of Oakland, CA, known as the Murder Dubs. He compares types of civil society organizations (such as churches and neighborhood councils) and neighborhood empowerment strategies (such as place- and race-placed programming) and examines how these are shaped by social policy and by access to social, economic, and cultural capital. His work has been supported by UC Berkeley's Asian American Research Center and Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion, the Asian Pacific Americans Religions Research Initiative, and the Louisville Institute.
Department and Institution:
Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley
Bio/CV:
