LeiLani Nishime is a Professor of Communication at the University of Washington. She has written about multiracial Asian Americans, visual culture, and science fiction. Her current work centers on race and the environment and racialized technologies. She is the author of over 30 book chapters and articles in journals such as Journal of Asian American Studies, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Quarterly Journal of Speech, and Communication Theory. She is the author of Undercover Asian: Multiracial Asian Americans in Visual Culture (University of Illinois Press) and the co-editor of East Main Street (NYU Press), Global Asian American Popular Culture (NYU Press), and Racial Ecologies (University of Washington Press).
Before coming to UW she was an Associate Professor of American Multicultural Studies at Sonoma State University, she received her PhD in English from the University of Michigan, and a BA in English from UC Berkeley. She has been the Grants Manager for the Seattle Asia American Film Festival for over ten years and co-edits the Environmental Communication, Power, and Culture series for University of California Press. She is also the recipient of the Association of Asian American Studies Excellence in Mentoring Award in 2025.
