Rocío Rosales, UCI associate professor of sociology, has been appointed one of six 2022-23 UCI Inclusive Excellence Professors. In this role, Rosales and her cohort will work as advisors to associate vice provost for faculty development, Nina Bandelj, also a sociology professor, to organize and run faculty development activities. They will also serve in mentoring roles for faculty who participate in grant-sponsored activities.

Rosales’s research focuses on international migration, immigrant and ethnic economies, race and ethnicity, law and society, Latinas/os in the U.S., and qualitative research methods. Her work, which has been featured in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and Ethnic and Racial Studies, has been funded by the American Philosophical Society, John Randolph and Dora Haynes Foundation, Ford Foundation, and Mellon Mays Foundation. She earned the American Sociological Association Distinguished Book Award from the Latinx Sociology Section in 2020 for her book, Fruteros: Street Vending, Illegality, and Ethnic Community in Los Angeles, in which she tells the stories of Los Angeles street vendors and the complex structure of their paisano social networks that have both helped and hindered their new lives in the U.S. Rosales, who earned her Ph.D. in sociology at UCLA, joined the UCI sociology faculty in 2014 following a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at UC San Diego in the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies.

Mentoring topics and issues that are of particular interest to Rosales in her new role include community building among faculty of color, faculty retention, navigating department interactions, and time management.

Read more about the 2022-23 cohort.