Professor Cristina Mora and Professor Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz are in the news discussing their efforts to advance and support Latinx research at UC Berkeley.
"UC Berkeley’s Social Sciences Division won a $1 million federal grant to establish the infrastructure that will help support mentoring Latinx studies and scholarship. The grant, which was included in the federal budget at the request of Sen. Alex Padilla and Rep. Barbara Lee, will help develop a training pipeline of predoctoral and postdoctoral scholars focused on issues affecting the Latinx community. It’ll also help establish the country’s first postdoctoral fellowship program for the most promising social scientists in Latinx studies. Additionally, it will support social science workshops, inform community engagement and influence local policy.
Eventually, the goal is to create an institutionalized Latinx research hub at Berkeley.
“There are some communities that are used to being overlooked by the ivory tower and used to not being seen as members of the research process,” Mora said. “Among those communities, Latinos are pretty high up there. And so I think when you see a grant that is about Latino research, I think some communities might finally feel like they’ve been seen.”"