Faculty Head & Associate Professor, History, Arizona State University

Julian Lim is an associate professor of History at Arizona State University. She holds a bachelor's degree in literature and a law degree from UC Berkeley, and received her doctorate in history from Cornell University. Trained in history and law, she focuses on immigration, borders, and race, and has taught in both history department and law school settings.

Lim's award-winning first book, Porous Borders: Multiracial Migrations and the Law in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), examines the history of diverse immigrants in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, and the development of immigration policy and law on both sides of the border. The book received the David J. Weber-Clements Center Prize for the best book on the American Southwest; the Outstanding Achievement in History award from the Association for Asian American Studies; the Humanities Book Award from the Institute for Humanities Research; and an Honorable Mention for the Theodore Saloutos Memorial Book Award for the best book on U.S. immigration history.

She has published articles on race, immigration and refugee law, and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands in the Pacific Historical Review, the California Law Review, and the U.C. Irvine Law Review. She is also the recipient of various research and travel awards and fellowships. She is currently working on her second book: an examination of U.S. territorial control and border expansions from the 1880s to the 1910s, and the correlating development of the plenary power doctrine in U.S. immigration law.