The Latinx and Democracy Cluster (LDC) is co-directed by new senior faculty members Lorena Oropeza, leading professor of Chicanx history and former Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Diversity at UC Davis, and Nicholas Vargas, leading professor of Latino classification and measurement and former Director of the Latinx Studies graduate specialization at the University of Florida. Professors Oropeza and Vargas recently joined UC Berkeley’s Chicanx/Latinx Studies Program in the Department of Ethnic Studies and are passionate about advancing pipelines for Latino scholars in the social sciences.
Dr. Lorena Oropeza is a professor of Chicanx/Latinx Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies. She primarily studies people who, during the 1960s, raised hell because they wanted to stop a war, fight racial injustice, or overthrow the patriarchy. Inspired by these activists, her research and teaching reflect her desire to harness what she considers history's subversive potential to prompt new ways of thinking among academics and members of the public alike.
Most of her research centers on the intersection of race and empire. Her first book examined the Chicano Movement's protest of the Vietnam War. Her second is an award-winning biography of a Chicano Movement leader who rose to fame by decrying the legacy of the U.S. takeover of northern Mexico in 1848. As a former journalist, she often employs oral history in her research, which has allowed her to incorporate women's experiences that might otherwise be overlooked.
Delighted to be a Chicanx/Latinx Studies Program member within the Ethnic Studies Department, she is also a senior member of the Latinx and Democracy Cluster (LDC), a group of scholars hired across several disciplines to advance Latinx-focused research across campus. The LDC directly aligns with another long-term interest of hers, increasing faculty diversity.
Dr. Nicholas Vargas is an Associate Professor of Chicanx/Latinx Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. He is co-lead of the Latinxs and Democracy Cluster at UCB and sits on the U.S. Census Bureau’s National Advisory Committee. Prior to Berkeley, Vargas was Coordinator of Latinx Studies at the University of Florida’s (UF) Center for Latin American Studies for eight years where he led the state’s only Latinx Studies graduate specialization. And before that, he was an Assistant Professor in the School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas. Vargas completed his B.A. in 2006 at Bloomsburg University, and earned his PhD in 2013 at Purdue. As a Latinx Studies scholar, Vargas’ research is situated within the social sciences, and focuses on ethnoracial classification, identification, and stratification. He is keenly interested in issues of race and measurement and seeks to explore how data can help people understand and undermine embedded systems of ethnoracial inequality. Vargas has published over 20 peer-reviewed research articles that have garnered awards from multiple sections of the American Sociological Association and can be found in journal outlets like Latino Studies, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Du Bois Review, Social Forces, and Race, Ethnicity and Education, among others.