Julio Fernando Salas is a third-year PhD student in the department. His research interests lie at the intersections of immigration, culture, emotions & intimacy, race & ethnicity, inequality, and health. He is interested in the most intimate aspects of immigrant family life; how members navigate attaining their desired lives and outcomes amid conditions that are antagonistic to such ideals; and the ambivalence they experience and the reconciliations they make in order to live.

He is the son and grandson of Mexican and Colombian immigrants who immigrated to NYC in the mid-to-late 1980s from Puebla, Mexico, and Bogotá, Colombia. Raised in Corona, Queens, he got his degrees from Queensborough Community College, Cornell University, and UC Berkeley, and everything else from Queens.