Celine Parreñas Shimizu to become new dean of UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television

Award-winning filmmaker, scholar and higher education leader Celine Parreñas Shimizu has been named the new dean of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.

An alumna of the school, Shimizu is currently dean of the division of arts at UC Santa Cruz, where she also serves as a distinguished professor in the department of film and digital media. She will begin her role at UCLA on July 1.

As dean since 2021, Shimizu oversaw the launch of the UC system’s first online undergraduate bachelor’s degree program and the construction of several state-of-the-art facilities, including a new academic building, a media lab, an arts and AI lab, graduate student art studios and the university’s first climate-controlled collecting gallery.

In addition, she dramatically increased the division’s fundraising, forged vital connections between the university and industry, helped to establish multiple endowed chairs and scholarship funds, and implemented comprehensive mentorship and professional development programs for faculty, staff and students with the support of major grants.

Over the course her tenure, she has nurtured a culture of inclusive excellence that helped advance faculty and staff diversity and democratize the division’s curriculum, and her outreach efforts led to new relationships with broader communities, both locally and globally, as well as innovative communications systems that brought the arts to new audiences.

Shimizu has also lent her expertise and leadership to pivotal campuswide initiatives and has served on UC systemwide councils on faculty diversity and Asian American–Pacific Islander leadership.

“As the new dean of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, I bring a deep love for my alma mater and a commitment to ensuring that every encounter with our institution is transformative — that is what happened to me here,” said Shimizu, who earned her M.F.A. in film directing and production at UCLA in 1996. “I remember learning to give value to my ideas and to read the work of those who came before so I could truly know how film and theater provide us the language to understand ourselves and change how we treat each other. UCLA TFT shaped me, and I possess a passionate desire to help the institution achieve even greater eminence under my leadership.”

Prior to her tenure at Santa Cruz, Shimizu was director of the school of cinema at San Francisco State University, from 2015 to 2021, and a professor of Asian American studies, feminist studies and film studies at UC Santa Barbara, from 2001 to 2015. In addition to her M.F.A., she holds a doctorate in modern thought and literature from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree in ethnic studies from UC Berkeley.

A distinguished scholar and filmmaker

Shimizu is internationally recognized for her groundbreaking scholarship on race, sexuality and representations in transnational popular culture and is the author of the books “The Movies of Racial Childhoods” (2024), “The Proximity of Other Skins” (2020), “Straitjacket Sexualities” (2012) and “The Hypersexuality of Race” (2007), winner of the Cultural Studies Book Award from Association for Asian American Studies. Her peer-reviewed articles have appeared in top journals centered on cinema, performance, and ethnic, feminist and sexuality studies.

As a filmmaker, Shimizu has worked on both documentary and narrative films, including, most recently, “So To Speak,” which premiered last month at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival and has won four festival awards. “The Celine Archive” (2020) and “80 Years Later: On Japanese American Racial Inheritance” (2022) both garnered multiple film festival awards.

A highly sought-after expert and speaker, she has been invited to give presentations throughout the U.S. and around the world, including at Pixar, Amazon Studios, the Smithsonian Institution, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the University of Cambridge in the U.K. and the Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry, and is frequently cited in major news media outlets.

Among her honors and recognitions, Shimizu was elected to the board of the International Council for Arts Deans, and in 2022, she was honored with the Mentorship Award from the Association for Asian American Studies. In 2023, she was inducted into the Stanford University Multicultural Alumni Hall of Fame.

“Dean Shimizu’s significant academic, professional and administrative experience and achievements, coupled with her TFT roots, position her well to lead the school at this pivotal moment,” UCLA Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Darnell Hunt wrote in a message to campus. “Chancellor Frenk and I are confident that TFT will reach new heights under Dean Shimizu’s inclusive, creative and visionary leadership.”

As TFT dean, Shimizu succeeds Brian Kite, who in February became UCLA’s dean and vice provost of graduate education. Chon Noriega, a distinguished professor in the school’s department of film, television and digital media, has served as interim dean since Feb. 1.