Paul Spickard

Paul Spickard is a Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), specializing in Comparative Race and Ethnicity, US Social and Cultural History (17th-21st centuries), World History, and Migrations and Identities. He holds affiliate appointments in Asian American Studies, Black Studies, Chicana/o Studies, East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, Religious Studies, and The Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

His research focuses on ethnic questions, with publications spanning religious minorities in China, African Americans in the 1940s, Japanese Americans, Pacific Islanders, multiracial people, and Turkish Germans. Spickard approaches history as a way to make individual human experiences understandable to others and as a sociologist examining how we comprehend and manage our sense of ethnic connection.

His extensive publication record demonstrates consistent themes of immigration, race, colonialism, and identity formation across multiple contexts. His work shows an evolution from specific ethnic group studies toward broader comparative and global perspectives on mixed race identities and immigration history, with increasing theoretical sophistication in his later works.

• Fellow, Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, South Africa, 2025
• Senior Core Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study, Central European University, Budapest, 2021-22
• Robert Perry Mentoring Award, National Association for Ethnic Studies, 2016
• INDIEFAB Silver Book Award in Social Science, 2016, for Race in Mind
• Critical Mixed Race Studies Association inaugurated the Paul Spickard Graduate Student Paper Award in his honor, 2014

Spickard has mentored numerous graduate students who have secured academic positions across the United States. His teaching philosophy emphasizes passion and engagement, believing that if a professor cares passionately about their subject and that students learn, both will have a good experience and grow. He has led public history projects including the successful campaign to remove a monument to eugenicist Madison Grant from Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park and replace it with educational signage about environmentalism and racism.