UCLA
Institute of American Cultures

Veronica Terriquez, Ph.D.

Veronica Terriquez

Photo Credit: Ernesto Chavez, CSRC Visiting Researcher 2014-2015

Director, Chicano Studies Research Center
Professor of Chicana/o and Central American Studies and Urban Planning

Dr. Veronica Terriquez is a leading scholar of youth and leadership development in Latinx communities. She conducts innovative research that brings a civic engagement and social movement lens into conversation with sociological concerns about migration, education and youth development, and political participation. Her work draws strategically on mixed methods that include surveys, spatial data, focus groups, participant observations, and semi-structured interviews. Dr. Terriquez’s publications in top social science journals touch on a variety of dimensions of Latinx communities’ experiences: education and political engagement, but also health and labor outcomes.

In addition to pursuing such cutting-edge research, Professor Terriquez has tirelessly dedicated her academic career and much of her adult life to supporting the civic organizing efforts to empower youth, particularly children of immigrants and youth of color. She has carried out and disseminated her research in collaboration with schools, unions, community organizations, and local governments in a way that vastly increases her impact not just within academia, but also in the lives of the very people she includes in her research.

Professor Terriquez’s research has been supported by major grants from the Irvine Foundation, the California Endowment, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Her publications include awarding-winning work recognized by the American Sociological Association. Moreover, she has received prestigious fellowships from the Stanford University Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and the Ford Foundation.

Dr. Terriquez comes to UCLA from UC Santa Cruz, where she was a faculty member in the Sociology Department. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from UCLA, an M.A. in Education from the University of California, Berkeley, and her B.A. in Sociology from Harvard University.