Associate Professor, Sociology
Education
Ph.D. in Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles, June 2018
M.A. in Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles, June 2012
M.A. in Social Science, University of Chicago, June 2009
B.A. in English and Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, December 2004
Biography
Dr. Chavarria's research is driven by an interdisciplinary approach, incorporating
frameworks from Sociology, Education, and Ethnic Studies to examine the relationship
between structural social inequities and youth’s agency in enacting transformative
social change. She has been published in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, Journal of Latinos and Education, and AERA Open. Her most recent work, Fractured paths: undocumented Latina/o students’ college-going
experiences amidst shifting policies, appears in the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education.
My experiences as a working-class, first-generation college goer striving against
structural barriers fuel and inform my research, teaching, and service towards achieving
greater diversity and equal opportunity to access academia at the undergraduate and
graduate levels. Over the 10+ years of working with high school Chicanx/Latinx and
diverse college undergraduate students within and outside of the classroom, I have
foregrounded the connections between community ways of knowing and academic knowledge
through analyses of social inequalities and the potential avenues for addressing practices
that reproduce inequity in society.