Meet Karl Lyn, UC President’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Anthropology
Meet Karl Lyn, UC President’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Anthropology
- September 23, 2026
- Ph.D., W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst
-----
Karl Lyn, University of California President’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow, studies Black political life and diverse economies, examining how Black communities respond to growing inequality and create pathways toward self-determination. He’s recently joined the Department of Anthropology at UC Irvine as part of the competitive UC system-level program that supports research, professional development and faculty mentoring for outstanding scholars.
“I decided to come to UC Irvine because I knew I’d be part of a community of really thoughtful scholars who are producing incredible work that helps us better understand the limits and possibilities of civil society and what it means to confront the ethical and existential challenges of our time,” he says.
His previous work - funded by the Ford Foundation, National Science Foundation, Mellon Foundation and Wenner-Gren Foundation – has been published in the Journal of Black Studies and Transforming Anthropology.
Lyn is coming to UCI from the University of Massachusetts Amherst where he earned his master’s in higher education, Ph.D. from the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies and was the recipient of the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition for his work, "Decriminalizing Education: A Black Freedom Struggle." Born and raised in Los Angeles, he’s looking forward to being close to home and continuing his ethnographic research in the community.
-----
Would you like to get more involved with the social sciences? Email us at communications@socsci.uci.edu to connect.
Related News Items