Irvine, Calif. – Graduate Division Dean Gillian Hayes has made an addition to the UCI Graduate Division staff, as Adria L. Imada joins the division as its new Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. She will begin her role on January 1, 2024.

“I’m thrilled to welcome an outstanding leader to Graduate Division,” said Dean Hayes. “Our graduate students and postdoctoral scholars are the lifeblood of the university and I’m happy to be able to add such a wonderful person to our staff that will help them in their journey.”

Imada was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. She currently serves as a professor of History at UCI and also teaches in the inter-school Medical Humanities undergraduate and graduate program. An award-winning writer, Imada specializes in U.S., Pacific, Indigenous, and disability histories. She also has broad teaching interests in health equity and visual culture.

“Serving our students is the most gratifying part of the job for me,” Imada said. “My goal is to make sure that all of our students can thrive at UCI. I’m very much looking forward to this opportunity.”

Her first book, Aloha America: Hula Circuits through the U.S. Empire, received four awards, including the Lawrence W. Levine Prize for best cultural history from the Organization of American Historians. Her second book, An Archive of Skin, An Archive of Kin: Disability and Life-Making during Medical Incarceration, received multiple prizes in 2023.

Imada’s research has received the support of numerous national fellowships and grants, including from the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Institutes of Health/National Library of Medicine. In 2021, Imada was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Imada’s work at UCI and in the broader profession centers access and inclusion of underrepresented and disabled scholars. As a founding faculty member of the UCI Medical Humanities program, Imada teaches core courses and mentors undergraduate students who are aspiring clinicians. In a leadership position with the Organization of American Historians, she co-programmed the first national U.S. History conference on Indigenous History in 2022.

At UCI, Imada has advised non-traditional, Indigenous, and international graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. She previously served on the Center for Medical Humanities executive committee and taught in the Humanities Core Program at UCI. Prior to joining UC Irvine in 2014, Imada was associate professor of Ethnic Studies at UC San Diego and a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow.