Earl Lee

earl e. lee, PhD (they/them) is a Clinical Assistant Professor and Assistant Dean of Inclusive Excellence at Arizona State University, holding a dual appointment across the Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation and the Shufeldt School of Medicine and Medical Engineering. 

dr. lee leads inclusive excellence strategy in both academic units, building the institutional conditions through which thousands of students encounter an education defined not by who it filters out, but by who it brings in and how they thrive. Their portfolio spans employee professional development, student belonging and equity, cultural and experiential programming, community collaboration and engagement, and strategic planning — the full architecture of what it takes to transform an institution rather than simply diversify it. This work extends globally: dr. lee directs international programs and partnerships for the Edson College, driven by the conviction that an institution serious about inclusion must also reckon with what health professions education owes the world.

dr. lee's scholarship examines how Black communities imagine, create, and inhabit futures in relation to science, technology, and medicine. Drawing on Black futurity, radical imagination, and abolitionist thought, they treat speculative fiction, storytelling, and creative expression as both theory and method for disrupting dominant narratives and cultivating liberatory, transformative possibilities in STEM and health professions education. Their work centers on a fundamental question: what does it mean to reimagine who belongs in the health sciences, and what futures are they invited to build?

This research identity does not exist separately from their administrative practice. dr. lee designs inclusive learning environments, guides organizational transformation, and weaves speculative thinking and the arts into institutional change. They operate from the conviction that liberation is not a distant horizon but already underway, shaped by the stories communities tell and the futures they dare to create.

dr. lee's work demonstrates that the futures we teach toward are inseparable from the futures we make possible.