Professor Emerita ChorSwang Ngin, Ph.D.
Contact Information: [email protected]
ChorSwang Ngin, Ph.D. is Professor Emerita of Applied Socio-Cultural Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at California State University, Los Angeles. She joined Cal State LA in 1993 and recently retired in 2024. Prof. Ngin won the Outstanding Professor Award in 2018. Prof. Ngin founded the B.A. Degree in Asian and Asian American Studies (AAAS) in 2004 and co-founded the College of Ethnic Studies, the second in the nation, in 2019. This history is documented in” Building a Home for Asian and Asian American Studies at Cal State LA: A Thirty-Year Struggle and Collaboration” in aapi nexus Vol. 21, Nos. 1 & 2 (Spring 2024).
Prof. Ngin’s international research and consulting includes research for the World Health Organization on “Indigenous Fertility Regulating Methods,” in Malaysia. For the World Bank, she has advised the Chinese provincial governments on the “Involuntary Resettlement” of huge populations affected by the building of four hydroelectric dams. With support from the UNHCR, she has also conducted research on the Vietnamese Boat People in the Malaysian refugee camps and briefed the Malaysian government to bring solutions to the women refugee’s unwanted pregnancies.
At Cal State LA, she has conducted a study on the Dreamers/DACA—undocumented students who were brought to the United States as children.
During the past two decades in the United States, she has conducted research and testified as an anthropological expert witness in several US federal courts on dozens of cases of people seeking asylum from several Asian countries, as well as a case from Mexico.
Her testimonies have changed many lives.
Prof. Ngin wrote about her experience in the book, Identities on Trial in the United States: Asylum Seekers from Asia (Lexington 2018). The book won the American Anthropological Association General Anthropology Division (GAD) Award for new directions in Public Anthropology in 2019.
In 2019, she was a Visiting Academic Scholar at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at Oxford University. At the Oxford’s “EuroExpert: “What is Cultural Expertise for?”, she attended workshops with judges, lawyers, and professors from both Europe and Asia to discuss using “Cultural Expertise” as a framework for litigation. Prof. Ngin advocate for the mindful application of “Cultural Expertise” in teaching and learning with asylum cases from China, Indonesia, Myanmar, and Malaysia.
Her two chapters on “Cultural Expertise on Race” (Chapter 4) and “Cultural Expertise in the United States” (Chapter 25), are published in a recent book, Cultural Expertise, Laws, and Rights: A Comprehensive Guide, edited by Livia Holden (Routledge 2023). https://www.routledge.com/Cultural-Expertise-Law-and-Rights-A-Comprehensive-Guide/Holden/p/book/9781032498607
Her case on a transgender from Mexico, co-authored with Joann Yeh and Luz Borjon, is published in Anthropological Forum 33(3): Forensic and Expert Social Anthropological Practice https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/canf20/33/3
In 2022, Prof. Ngin gave the Distinguished Lecture to the General Anthropology Division at the annual conference of the American Anthropology Association meeting in Seattle, Washington. Her talk, “Who Gets the Permission to Write and Teach What? Cultural Expertise on Race in the American Courtroom and Anthropology” is published in Bulletin of the General Anthropology Division Volume 30 | Number 1 | Spring 2023.
Prof. Ngin is also a playwright. After her trip with colleagues to Xinjiang, China, in September 2001, to facilitate a student/faculty exchange program, she hosted a Hui Muslim woman student from Xinjiang in her home. Inspired by that experience, she wrote a play, The Houseguest from Xinjiang (co-authored with Mr. CY Lee) to bring about difficult conversations to a larger audience on sensitive topics such as religion, culture, and identity through the experience of a Muslim student in Los Angeles.
The play enjoyed multiple readings in Hollywood, at Cal Poly Pomona, and Cal State LA. In 2017, she brought together faculty, staff, students, and the community as cast and crew in a successful full production at Cal State LA in October 2017. (http://www.houseguestfromxinjiang.com/).
Two Cal State LA Anthropology students also produced a documentary on The Making of the Houseguest from Xinjiang.
Prof. Ngin is featured in a CFA Headline in May 2023 in CFA Los Angeles Member Focuses on the Overlooked by Leading with Dignity and Care
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Email: [email protected]