Dr. Justin de Leon
Assistant Professor, Ethnic Studies
Wilkinson College Other Programs, Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences
Office Location: Beckett 120
Office Hours: Tuesdays 1-3pm or by appointment.
Email: judeleon@chapman.edu
Website: http://www.justindeleon.org/
- Education:
- Allegheny College, Bachelor of Arts
University of Central Florida, Master of Arts
University of Delaware, Master of Arts
University of Delaware, Ph.D.
Biography
Justin de Leon, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at Chapman University.
His research examines Indigenous sovereignty, relationality, and decolonial approaches
to political practice, with particular attention to land, film and storytelling, and
community-based creative practice.
De Leon is completing a book, “Relational Filmmaking: Kinship, Power, and Place,”
under contract with the University of Nebraska Press. The project develops relational
filmmaking as an approach to collaborative Indigenous media practice grounded in kinship,
place, accountability, and learning through practice. His broader research considers
how relational ways of being and Indigenous cosmologies and can reshape understandings
of sovereignty, political community, and knowledge production.
His creative and scholarly work includes more than a decade of community-embedded
filmmaking with Indigenous communities. He has helped develop the Native Film and
Storytelling Institute, the Creative Sovereignty Lab, and the First Peoples Film Lab,
which bring together Indigenous filmmakers, community members, students, and apprentices
through collaborative film production. The films he has worked on have screened at
the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, imagineNATIVE Film + Media
Arts Festival, the San Francisco American Indian Film Festival, and other Indigenous
film festivals.
De Leon’s scholarship has appeared in Millennium: Journal of International Studies,
the International Feminist Journal of Politics, Borderlands, and edited volumes on
Indigenous sovereignty, International Relations, peacebuilding, and pedagogy. His
work brings together Indigenous studies, critical and feminist approaches to International
Relations, ethnographic research, and creative practice.
He previously taught at the University of California, San Diego, Occidental College, and the University of Notre Dame, and has worked in peace and conflict resolution and international development in a range of global contexts. He is a Rotary World Peace Fellow and a former Mills College Research at the Intersections Fellow.
He previously taught at the University of California, San Diego, Occidental College, and the University of Notre Dame, and has worked in peace and conflict resolution and international development in a range of global contexts. He is a Rotary World Peace Fellow and a former Mills College Research at the Intersections Fellow.
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Recent Creative, Scholarly Work and Publications
- De Leon, Justin and Jordan Bighorn. 2024. “Building a New Lodge: Native American Youth and Peacebuilding,” Building Sustainable Peace with and for Young People: Examining Evidence, Trends, and Challenges, Eds. H. Berents, C. Bolten, S. McEnvoy-Levy, with Jordan Bighorn, Manchester University Press. Pg. 242-258.
- De Leon, Justin. 2023. “Theorizing from the Land: House or Tipi of IR,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 50(3): 601-838.
- De Leon, Justin. 2023. “Long Kwento: An Invitation.” Essay in Artist Maia Cruz Palileo. Sming Sming Books. Pg. 151-173.
- De Leon, Justin and Matthew Wildcat. 2023. “Indigenous Sovereignty As the In-Between Space: What Is and What Is Possible,” Variations on Sovereignty: Snapshots of Political Contestation and Transformation from Brexit to the South China Sea, Eds. H. Cerny, J. Grzybowski. Routledge, Pgs. 301-315.