Faculty Spotlight – Dr. Claudia Lopez

Dr. Claudia Maria Lopez is an Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department at California State University, Long Beach.  She graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz in June 2017 with a Ph.D. in Sociology, and designated emphasis in Latin American and Latinx Studies and Feminist Studies. Since joining the department in Fall 2017, Dr. Lopez has taught Qualitative Research Methods (SOC 354); The Sociology of Globalization (SOC 430); and Modern Sociological Theory (SOC 357).

Her current research project, and forthcoming manuscript, “The Life-Cycle of Forced Migration: The Lives and Politics of Rural Internally Displaced Persons in the Medellín ‘Miracle,’” draws from over 7 years of ethnographic and survey research to explore the urban resettlement and integration of rural internally displaced peasants in the city of Medellín, Colombia. 

In addition to her larger project, Dr. Lopez is also a researcher on projects that aim to understand how gentrification and urban “renewal” affects local urban and immigrant communities in California: the first project, No Place at Home, explores the affordable housing crisis in Santa Cruz http://noplacelikehome.ucsc.edu/en/; and the second project, which begins in Fall 2018, seeks to describe the lived experience of displacement due to urban development in Los Angeles country.