Dr. Lily Cho

Vice-Provost and Associate Vice-President (International) 

Western International
London, ON Canada

Dr. Cho leads the strategic initiatives of Western’s global engagement objectives including deepening research partnerships, expanding research mobility, offering domestic students more global experiences for learning and research, and increasing Western’s international undergraduate student population. As a first-generation scholar with a research and teaching interest in diaspora and culture, she understands the power of culture to bring together communities across a range of different experiences and histories.

 

Cho’s leadership in internationalization within higher education includes a term as associate dean for Global & Community Engagement in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies at York University where she led the Faculty’s international recruitment strategy, global mobility programs, and international partnership agreements. She brings to her leadership a commitment to internationalization with a focus on support for international student success.

 

Her research has led to books on Chinese restaurants and the relationship between human rights and creative expression. Her new book, Mass Capture: Chinese Head Tax and the Making of Non-Citizens, examines the connections between race, surveillance, and citizenship. It is also McGill-Queen’s University Press’ first Open Access volume. This book has been awarded the Association for Asian American Studies’ 2023 Book Prize for Outstanding Achievement in the Multidisciplinary category.

 

Lily received her PhD in English from the University of Alberta. After completing postdoctoral studies at the University of California, Riverside, she joined Western University in 2004 as a faculty member in what was then the department of English. In 2010, she joined York University’s department of English where she went on to serve additional administrative roles including undergraduate program director and department chair.