Daniel D. Liou (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles) is an associate professor at Arizona State University. A community-based researcher, former school board president, and longtime educational leader, Liou’s scholarship explores the sociological manifestations of expectations in the organization of classrooms, schools, and society, contextualizing educational practices in relational, curricular and institutional terms. Liou is co-editor for the highly influential Review of Educational Research, and serves on the editorial board for the International Journal of Critical Media Literacy, the SoJo Journal: Social and Cultural Foundations of Education, and the Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership.
To date, Liou has amassed more than 90 academic journal articles, book chapters, technical reports, and public and community-engaged scholarship. His research has appeared in leading journals such as Educational Administration Quarterly, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, Journal of Teacher Education, Teachers College Record, Race Ethnicity and Education, and Urban Education.
Liou's scholarly impact has been recognized with numerous national and institutional honors. In 2026, the American Educational Research Association honored him with the Distinguished Researcher Award from the AAPI-ER Special Interest Group. Arizona State University's Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation has recognized his work with the Excellence in the Scholarship of Engagement Award (2025–2026), the Professor of Impact Award (2023), and the Outstanding Promising Research Scholar Award (2017). Earlier in his career, he received the American Educational Research Association's Social Justice Teaching Award in Educational Leadership (2015).
Additionally, Liou has more than 30 years of experience holding various leadership and academic positions in PK-12 and higher education. He began his career as a middle school youth counselor at the San Francisco Community Youth Center. In 1996, Liou was recognized by the Berkeley Unified School District for his advocacy work with immigrant students and families, and in 1997 Berkeley High School presented him with the Excellence Service Award for building an effective family-school engagement program with the bilingual community. Liou twice received the Most Inspirational Award from the University of California at Berkeley for creating a high school outreach program that paired undergraduate mentors with first-generation, immigrant, and refugee students to support their college-going futures.
To affirm ASU's guiding frameworks of Principled Innovation and Inclusive Excellence, from 2015 to 2020, Liou served as an appointed member of the Equitable and Inclusive Practices Advisory Council at the Arizona Department of Education, which resulted in the development of the state's first culturally inclusive teaching guidelines. From 2020 to 2024, he served on the Los Angeles College Prep Academy School Board, including three years as board president, where he advanced policies promoting educational opportunity, community partnership, and student success.