Dr. Justin de Leon

Justin de Leon, Ph.D. is the director of the Ethnic Studies program. De Leon is a Senior Advisor for the Mediation Program for University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and has previously taught at the University of California, San Diego, Occidental College, and University of Notre Dame. De Leon earned his Ph.D. in international relations with a focus on feminist theory and indigeneity and is completing a book project entitled Resurgent Visual Sovereignty (under contract with the University of Nebraska). His research focuses on Indigenous sovereignty and ontological security through storytelling and filmmaking.  

De Leon’s creative work and scholarship includes community-based filmmaking programming and a podcast focused on decolonial pedagogy. His films have been screened at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American Indian, ImagineNATIVE Film Festival, and San Francisco American Indian Film Festival and has published articles in Borderlands, Millennium, and the International Feminist Journal of Politics.  

De Leon is the director of the Native Film and Storytelling Institute / Creative Sovereignty Lab and previously served as Media Director of the Indigenous Oral History Program for the UN’s Documentation Center for Indigenous Peoples (DoCIP). He is a Rotary World Peace Fellow and Mills College Research at the Intersections Fellow and, prior to graduate studies, worked in the peace and conflict resolution and global development fields in locations such as Northern Ireland, Nepal, India, Cambodia, the Philippines, Thailand, Honduras, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. 

Recent Creative, Scholarly Work and Publications

Media 

• Apprentice program: Creative Sovereignty Lab website 
• Podcast: Pedagogies for Peace (2020-2022) 
• Short Film: Braided Together (2022, 12mins) 
• Feature Film: More Than a Word (2018, 70mins) 

Publications 

• “Theorizing from the Land: House or Tipi of IR” 2023. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 50(3): 760-784. 
• “Long Kwento: An Invitation,” 2023. In Long Kwento: Maia Cruz Palileo. Sming Sming Books. Pgs. 151-173. 
• “The In-Between Space: Indigenous Sovereignties in Creative and Comparative Perspective,” 2020. Borderlands 19(2): 1-28 (coauthored with Matthew Wildcat). 
• “Relationship of Responsibility: Indigeneity in the IR Classroom,” 2021. In Teaching International Relations in a Time of Disruption. Eds. Heather A. Smith and David J. Hornsby. Political Pedagogies. Springer Nature. Pg. 75-88. 
• “Lakota Experiences of (In)Security: Cosmology and Ontological Security,” 2020. International Feminist Journal of Politics 22(1): 33-62. 
• “Preserving Values: Militarization and Powwows,” 2020. Borderlands 19(2): 130-156. 
• “Process as Product: Native American Filmmaking and Storytelling,” 2020. In Racialized Media: The Design, Delivery, and Decoding of Race and Ethnicity. Eds. Matthew W. Hughey and Emma Gonzalez-Lesser. New York University Press. Pgs. 114-136. 
• “Showing Not Telling,” 2018. International Feminist Journal of Politics 20(1): 95-98.