Biography

Dr. Laura C. Chávez-Moreno is an interdisciplinary scholar and assistant professor at UCLA’s César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies.

Dr. Chávez-Moreno researches, writes, and teaches about Chicanx/Latinx education. Her scholarship examines how schooling teaches about race and makes Latinidad. She connects these theorizations with questions about educational equity, particularly in the areas of teaching, literacy, language, and racialization. Her work critiques systems of oppression in schooling and works toward using education for self-determination.

Dr. Chávez-Moreno is a 2022 National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, one of the most prestigious early-career research awards for education researchers. The research fellowship supports early-career scholars who, according to the National Academy of Education, are working in critical areas of education research. The fellowship will sponsor her book project Racialization and Equity in Education, forthcoming from the Harvard Education Press Series Race & Education. The book presents how a school district’s bilingual-education program and its teachers engage in racialization (that is, demarcate racialized groups) and construct ideas about race and Latinidad. This project explores these issues because how bilingual schooling teaches about race, racism, and Latinidad affects whether it can disrupt racial hierarchies and provide students an education for self-determination. Racialization and Equity in Education broadens conceptions of education’s role in racialization and in cultivating critical-racial consciousness, and re-imagines how to make schooling equitable.

Dr. Chávez-Moreno’s research has been recognized with multiple awards, including from: American Educational Research Association (AERA) Division G Social Contexts in Education; AERA Latinx Research Issues Special Interest Group (SIG); AERA Bilingual Education Research SIG; American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education; and National Association of Bilingual Education.

Dr. Chávez-Moreno is a fellow of the 2020–2022 cohort of NCTE Research Foundation’s Cultivating New Voices among Scholars of Color. Prior to joining the UCLA CCAS faculty, she was a Postdoctoral Scholar at UCLA’s School of Education & Information Studies. She served as a teacher in the Philadelphia Public School District for five years, wrote district curriculum, and served on boards of community organizations. She has taught in all schooling levels, including elementary, secondary, tertiary, and older-adult education. Her undergraduate and

graduate course topics include critical race studies in education, literacy, language, and bilingual education. Among her many service activities, she has mentored undergraduate and graduate students through several organizations, including the Hispanic Scholarship Fund. Dr. Chávez-Moreno grew up in Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Sonora, México.