Junior Scholars Symposium

Latinx Social Science Pipeline Initiative Junior Scholars Symposium Program Overview

The Latinx Social Science Pipeline Initiative (LSSPI), in collaboration with UC Berkeley scholars, students, and staff, supports the training and development of social scientists, data analysts, policymakers, and public intellectuals focused on Latino/a communities and efforts to improve socioeconomic conditions and advance racial justice.

The Junior Scholars Symposium is an annual initiative that convenes young scholars working on a dissertation, a book, or another research project related to U.S. and transnational Latino communities.

The first edition of the Junior Scholar Symposium was held this summer with the support of UCLA's Chicano Studies Research Center. The event was held at the Latinx Research Center from June 25-28, 2024. Eleven junior fellows from around the country received relevant training and the opportunity to establish networks and build community in their fields. They also had a chance to share their research and receive critical feedback. A Writing Group was also established to help students throughout the rest of the summer and the following academic year. In writing and learning together, participants moved forward with their writing and publication goals.

The following scholars participated in the Junior Scholars Symposium's first edition:

Andrew J. Padilla

Andrew J. Padilla is an award-winning artist and educator born and raised in East Harlem. From Hostos to Harvard, Andrew has lectured on Urban Politics across the US. He has a decade of experience in project management, strategic operations, and leadership in English and Spanish. After studying international development in Geneva, Switzerland, Andrew won a MacCracken Fellowship to study the impact of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies on democratic governance at NYU. In 2022, he helped develop and lead a course at Columbia University (GSAPP) Graduate School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation entitled; “Shaping Spaces of Sovereignty: Designing for Decolonial Realities and Visions in Puerto Rico.” He has written for The Daily Beast, BET News, MTV News, NPR Latino, and City Limits, & SUNY Press, among others. Andrew enjoys basketball, dancing, and growing plants in his free time with the green thumb he inherited from his abuelo.

Caroline Martinez

Caroline is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. I received my M.A. in Gender and Development from the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) - Ecuador and a B.A. in Sociology and Gender and Women’s Studies from Bowdoin College. Her dissertation centers on Indigenous and Latinx identification in the United States. This mixed-method project seeks to highlight the socioeconomic disadvantages that Indigenous Latinxs face in comparison to their non-Indigenous counterparts and to account for the recent increase in the population that identifies as both Latino and American Indian in the U.S. Census. As someone who grew up in Ecuador and the United States, I seek to create a greater understanding between distinct racial ideologies that emerged in North, Central, and South America and that inform how we think about racial categories and boundaries and, thus, determine the allocation of resources and rights.

Joana Chavez

Joana Chavez is a first-generation student raised in the Inland Empire. She attended Mt. San Jacinto College and then transferred to the University of California, Riverside, where she got her BA in Ethnic Studies and Spanish. She is currently a PhD candidate in Chicana/o and Central American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she researches gendered carceral spaces (youth group homes) and uses testimonials to uplift young women of color’s voices in these spaces in the Inland Empire. She has been part of the Million Dollar Hoods Project since 2018- a community-driven and multidisciplinary initiative documenting the human and fiscal costs of mass incarceration in Los Angeles. Currently, she is part of Archiving the Age of Mass Incarceration Initiative Project at UCLA, where she is invested in abolishing violent systems that harm communities of color. She enjoys being surrounded by her community, family, and nature to ground herself. 

Katie M. Duarte

Katie M. Duarte is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at Brown University. Her expertise includes gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, intersectionalities, Latinidad, cultural sociology, and qualitative methods. Katie's research agenda uses a cultural sociology approach to analyze the meanings and narratives we use to understand our experiences or cultural items, specifically for Afro-Latinx and Latinx people. Katie's dissertation project currently considers the gendered narratives and Latinx and Black identity-making through curly hair and the natural hair movement amongst Dominicans (of all genders) in New York City and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, utilizing interviews and ethnographic observations at curly hair salons. Her dissertation also explores how Dominican women (re)construct their ideas of racialized femininity and beauty with their hair journey or their personal histories of hair.

Liliana V. Rodriguez

Liliana V Rodriguez is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Sociology at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. She is also the Southwest Borderlands and Mexican American Studies program coordinator. Dr. Rodriguez earned her undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of Texas at Austin and her doctoral degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her areas of interest include Latina/o sociology, international migration, immigrant youth, ethnographic research methods, and race and ethnicity studies. Her current work centers on the experiences of adolescent arrivals as they navigate life in the United States during contested political times. Her work has been published in journals, including the Journal of Ethnic and Racial Studies and Migration Studies. She is a recipient of a Career Enhancement Fellowship for Junior Faculty from the Institute for Citizens & Scholars.

Nalya Rodriguez

Nalya A. F. Rodriguez (They/She) is currently a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at the University of Southern California in the American Studies and Ethnicity Department. In Fall 2024, they will be starting an Assistant Professor position in the Department of Criminology and Justice Studies at California State University, Northridge. They received their M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. Nalya is a Maya Ch’orti’ activist scholar whose research focuses on race, media, policing and gang violence in the U.S. and Central America. They are trained in mixed methods research. Their work examines the socio-historical and legal constructions of Central Americans as “terrorists” in the U.S. and the counternarratives used to resist state labeling. They have worked in secondary education programs for incarcerated students and students in at-promise communities. Nalya has been involved in Central American and formerly incarcerated and systems-impacted student movements throughout California. Their community work centers on abolitionist practices, and their research is grounded in critical reflection, accountability, and radical love. They received a B.A. in Sociology and Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley.

Karen Villegas

Karen Villegas is a doctoral candidate in the Berkeley School of Education at UC Berkeley. She received her B.A. in Political Science from UCLA. Karen’s overarching work explores issues of language, citizenship, and nation-building processes. Karen’s dissertation studies the ideological conceptions of language and literacy practices in adult English as a Second Language (ESL) citizenship classes. Adults enroll in these classes to prepare for the naturalization process, a means of acquiring U.S. citizenship available to lawful permanent residents after meeting extensive federal requirements. Using a range of methods, including interviews, participant observation, and archival research, Karen’s work shows how these learning spaces do not foster a sense of political incorporation or belonging and instead position U.S. immigrants to identify as workers rather than citizens who can influence their world.

Roger S. Cadena

Roger S. Cadena, Jr. is a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of Notre Dame and an A.S.A. Minority Fellowship Program Fellow. Roger’s research exists at the intersections of race, ethnicity, culture, and Latino/a/x sociology and politics. Drawing on original, in-depth interviews with U.S.U.S. Latinos from around the country, Roger’s dissertation, The Construction, Connection, and Communication of Latinx Identities and Politics, unpacks the heterogeneity of Latinx life and highlights the complex and contradictory feelings, choices, and ideologies Latinxs navigate surrounding racialization and the two-party system. Roger’s research on Latino Republicans has been published in the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, while his research on W.E.B. Du Bois’ theorization of racial ideologies and school curricula has been published in Sociology Compass. Before attending Notre Dame, Roger was a high school social studies teacher in Chicago Public Schools. Roger also received an M.A.M.A. in International Relations from the University of Chicago and a B.A.B.A. in History-Social Science Education from Illinois State University. For leisure, Roger enjoys listening to the latest Bey album or legal podcasts on walks or while cooking, watching T.V.T.V./movies with good friends, and reading the many books he’s been gifted over the years.

Amy Andrea Martinez

Amy Andrea Martinez is a postdoctoral scholar at the Latino Social Science Pipeline Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley Department of Sociology. She earned her doctoral degree in Criminal Justice from the Criminal Justice Studies Department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York. Her research interests include Mexican/Chicano Gang Culture, Mass Incarceration, Third World and Indigenous Qualitative Research Methods, U.S. (Settler) Colonialism, Police Use of Lethal Force, and Prison/Police Abolition. As a first-generation, working-class, and system-impacted Xicana from Southern California, her experiences inform her commitment to decolonial gang research on Mexican/Chicanx families and their associations and experiences with gang and street life.

Lorraine Torres-Colón

Lorraine Torres Colon is a postdoctoral scholar at the Latino Social Science Pipeline Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley Department of Sociology. Dr. Torres Colon is a decolonial feminist sociologist interested in studying health and socioeconomic inequalities. Her research lies at the intersections of race and ethnicity, health, migration, labor, gender, and violence. She is broadly concerned with using quantitative methods to map gendered health and socioeconomic inequalities associated with colonialism, coloniality, and migration within and between former metropoles and the non-sovereign territories they administer. Dr. Torres Colon’s current work spatially analyzing Puerto Rican administrative court and police records contributes to an emerging field of research that understands violence as a public health issue embedded within local and global ecosystems of health, sovereignty, and socioeconomic well-being.

Dr. Torres Colon’s research agenda currently includes three lines of interest: 1) the geospatial patterning of public health issues within non-sovereign territories, 2) the socioeconomic incorporation of colonial racialized subjects and colonial immigrants within high-income current and former metropoles, and 3) theoretical analysis of gendered colonial logics that undergird much of the 20th-century literature surrounding migrants’ incorporation within former empires. Her writing has been published in several journals, including the Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, and the Annual Review of Sociology. Lorraine holds a PhD in Sociology from The City University of New York, The Graduate Center.

Pamela Zabala

Pamela Zabala Ortiz is a sociologist of race and ethnicity and an incoming Assistant Professor of Sociology at Boston University. Her research interests include race-making, identity and belonging, and transnational constructions of race, focusing on Blackness and Latinidad. Pamela earned her Bachelor's degree in Sociology from Bowdoin College and her Master's degree and PhD in Sociology from Duke University, where her dissertation was titled "Black, but 'Not Black': Dominican Racial Contestations and the Pursuit of Authentic Blackness."