Curriculum Vitae

Biography

Dr. Nancy López (nlopez@unm.edu) is professor of sociology at the University of New Mexico. Dr. López directs and co-founded the Institute for the Study of "Race" and Social Justice (race.unm.edu) and she is the founding coordinator of the New Mexico Statewide Race, Gender, Class Data Policy Consortium. She has served on the Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee and as Associate Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion, and co-chair of the Diversity Council that established the university-wide “U.S. & Global Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Power [DEIP]” undergraduate requirement. Dr. López is currently co-chair of the Education Subcommittee and chair of the data working group of the New Mexico Governors Council for Racial Justice and co-chair of the Policy and Data Committee of the Black Education Act Advisory Committee. Dr. López has served as Secretary-Treasurer of the American Sociological Association (ASA) and she has chaired then ASA Committee on the Status of Racial and Ethnic Minorities and the ASA Section on Race, Gender and Class. She has also served as Vice President of the Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS).

Dr. López's scholarship, teaching and service is guided by the insights of intersectionality --the importance of examining race, gender, class, ethnicity together--for interrogating inequalities across a variety of social outcomes, including education, health, employment, housing, and developing contextualized solutions that advance social justice. Her book, Hopeful Girls, Troubled Boys: Race and Gender Disparity in Urban Education (2003) focuses on the race-gender experiences of Dominicans, West Indians, and Haitians to explain why girls are succeeding at higher rates than boys. Her other co-edited books include Creating Alternative Discourses in the Education of Latinos and Latinas (2003) and Mapping "Race": Critical Approaches to Health Disparities Research (2013), a multidisciplinary volume that was the byproduct of National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded workshop. The book departs from the premise that “race” is a multi-dimensional and multi-level social construction that has profound methodological implications for research and policy. Her most recent co-edited book, QuantCrit: An Antiracist Quantitative Approach to Educational Inquiry (2023) was previously published as a co-edited special issue of Race, Ethnicity and Education (2018). Dr. López’s current research, funded by the WT Grant Foundation and Hewlett Foundation, includes a mixed method study in three research practice partnerships that examine the role of ethnic studies curriculum and culturally relevant pedagogy in reducing complex intersectional inequalities in high school. Dr. López was awarded funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for a project entitled, “Employing and Intersectionality Framework in Revising Office of Management and Budget Standards for Collecting Administrative Race and Ethnicity Data" and the National Science Foundation (NSF) for cultivating a community of practice on Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) and Intersectionality for student success metrics and distribution of resources.

Dr. López has taught for over two decades in a variety of public universities (City University of New York, University of Massachusetts and University of New Mexico), that serve a very diverse group of students, including those who like Dr. López, were the first in their families to complete high school and pursue higher education. Dr. López has chaired or served as a member of over 80 doctoral degrees and masters degree committees. Dr. López has received several awards recognizing her contributions to mentoring, teaching, service and research, including the Gunter Starkey Teaching Award, Presidential Luminaria Award, the Inaugural Academic

Leadership Academy Fellowship, of the Division for Equity and Inclusion, UNM and the ASA William Foote Whyte Distinguished Career Award for Sociological Practice and Public Sociology. Dr. López is the first woman of color tenured in the Sociology department and the first woman of the African Diaspora (AfroLatina/Black Latina) tenured in the College of Arts and Sciences (2008) and promoted to full professor (2018) at UNM.

As the eldest of five US-born children of Dominican immigrants who never had the privilege of pursuing education beyond the second grade, Dr. López’s was born in the Lower East Side of Manhattan; Spanish her first language. She was raised in Baruch Public Houses. In 1987 Dr. López graduated from Washington Irving H.S., a de facto racially segregated large public vocational high school for girls and she participated federally funded equity-focused programs, such as Upward Bound and HeadStart.