Name:

Dr. Maricarmen Hernandez

Title:

Assistant Professor

Department:

Sociology

Describe your research in about 200 words.

My research interests are situated within the fields of environmental and political sociology. Drawing from ethnographic and a variety of qualitative methods, I study environmental justice and environmental racism issues in Latin America and within immigrant and minority communities in the U.S. My core research agenda is to examine how everyday experience and understandings of contamination contribute to the sociopolitical production of environmental inequality. My research links the literatures on social movements, contaminated communities, and environmental justice, furthering our understanding of the toxicity and precarity that many marginalized communities face.

What’s the most interesting thing you have learned from a student?

That empathy and understanding in the classroom go a long way.