Faculty Profiles

Victoria Tran is a sociologist of race and ethnicity, Asian American communities, and urban studies. Using archival and qualitative methods, she studies how government actors and community groups construct ideas of ethnic and spatial communities to push for policies surrounding redevelopment, policing, and neighborhood revitalization. This work examines the dynamics between community members and the government over the community’s power to shape their own neighborhoods, how the construction of racial and ethnic communities is influenced by class and immigration histories, and how competing interests within a community negotiate whose needs should be prioritized. Her current book project that traces the history of community engagement in policing and redevelopment in Los Angeles’ Chinatown from 1975 to 2012. Victoria received a BA in Leadership and Public Policy from the University of Virginia and a PhD in Sociology from UCLA. She joined Reed in 2026 and teaches courses on race and ethnicity, Asian American studies, and urban sociology.