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Laura C. Chávez-Moreno


Issues Diversity & Inclusion, Education, Language Access

Assistant Professor, César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o & Central American Studies, UCLA

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. Professor 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.

Dr. Chávez-Moreno was 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 sponsored her book manuscript project Racialization and Equity in Education, forthcoming from the Harvard Education Press Series Race & Education. The manuscript 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.

Professor 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.  Most recently the National Council for Teachers of English awarded the 2023 Alan C. Purves Award to her article, “The continuum of racial literacies: Teacher practices countering whitestream bilingual education,” published in the journal Research in the Teaching of English. The Purves Award is presented annually to an article from the journal’s previous year’s volume judged as likely to have the greatest impact on educational practice.

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. Among her many service activities, she has mentored undergraduate and graduate students through several organizations, including the Hispanic Scholarship Fund.

Professor Chávez-Moreno obtained her PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education and her MA in Literacy, Language, and Culture from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor School of Education. She received her BS in Education, Spanish and Secondary-level Education, and Latin American Studies from Northern Arizona University. She grew up in Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Sonora, México.