Victoria Tran
Biography
My research is situated in the fields of urban sociology, race and ethnicity, and Asian American studies. I study how community groups and neighborhoods participate in local politics to influence policies on redevelopment, the development of affordable housing, and policing. This work studies the dynamics between community members and the government over the community’s power to shape their own neighborhoods and how competing interests within a community negotiate whose needs should be prioritized. In another project, I study how political and urban sociology theories apply to Asian American communities and neighborhoods. My MA thesis used quantitative and spatial methods to analyze how the rate and type of 911 calls change as neighborhood composition changes.
Degrees
- M.A. Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles, 2021
- B.A. Leadership and Public Policy, University of Virginia, 2016
Fields of Study
Urban Sociology, Race and Ethnicity, Community Policing, Redevelopment and Gentrification, Asian Americans
Research
My dissertation studies how community groups participated in and opposed redevelopment in Los Angeles’ Chinatown from 1975-2005. While redevelopment have been understood to be primarily driven by government officials and rentier elites, community groups and residents are active players in urban politics over neighborhood revitalization and redevelopment. Within systems of urban governance that promote community-engaged redevelopment and participatory governance, claims of community ownership and the performance of community gives local actors legitimacy to define who governs, how they come to govern, and who speaks for the urban poor. While redevelopment projects are open to extensive public engagement processes through stakeholder task forces and public meetings, the practice of community engagement often reduces the community to a bureaucratic checkbox. The “community” then becomes a tool to promote a neighborhood while also creating a boundary for who does and does not belong, whose needs should be prioritized, and who has the right to speak on behalf of the neighborhood.
Using the Chinatown Redevelopment Project as a case study, I analyze how the power to define the neighborhood and its priorities was contested by groups with different social, economic, and cultural ties to the space and competing perceptions of their legitimacy to speak for the neighborhood. These contestations over community ownership shape what groups the government legitimized as community representatives, how projects were prioritized and funded, and who benefited from housing and redevelopment projects. I use archival documents, interviews, and historical quantitative data to understand the opportunities and limitations of community engagement in local urban politics and provide important context for current urban studies questions around neighborhood authenticity, community ownership, and displacement in minority and immigrant communities.
Publications
Tran, Victoria, and Katherine Smock. n.d. “Between the City and the People: The Pitfalls and Potential of Hyper-Local Governance of the Homelessness Crisis in Los Angeles.” Journal of Urban Affairs 0(0):1–16. doi:10.1080/07352166.2025.2564107.
Kaur, Harleen and Victoria Tran. 2023. “The Limits of Imperial Incorporation: Alternative Sociological Frameworks to Study Asian American Subjects.” Sociology Compass, e13069. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.13069.
Zhou, Min and Victoria Tran. 2021. “Asians are Doing Great, So That Proves Race Doesn’t Matter Anymore’: The Model Minority Myth and the Sociological Reality.” In Getting Real About Race, 3rd Edition, edited by Stephanie M. McClure and Cherise A. Harris. Thousand Oaks, Ca.: Sage.
Awards & Grants
- Center for Engaged Scholarship Dissertation Fellowship (2024)
- Russell Sage Foundation Dissertation Grant (2023)
- Haynes Lindley Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (2023)
- Professor Harry H.L. Kitano Fellowship, UCLA Asian American Studies Center (2023)
- Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, Ideas and Organizing Doctoral Award (2023)
- Institute of American Cultures Research Grant, UCLA (2022)
- Graduate Research Mentorship, UCLA (2021)
- Graduate Summer Research Mentorship, UCLA (2020, 2022)
- Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellowship, UCLA (2019, 2025)
