Biography
Sophia Jordán Wallace is a Professor of Political Science and the Stuart A. and Lee D. Scheingold Endowed Faculty Fellow in Social Justice at the University of Washington. She received her B.A. from UC San Diego and her Ph.D. from Cornell University. She specializes in Latino Politics, politics of race and ethnicity, immigration politics and policy, public opinion, and legislative politics. Her research has been funded by the Ford Foundation, Social Sciences Research Council (SSRC), Dirksen Congressional Center, and the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress.
Her co-authored book, Walls, Cages, and Family Separation: Race and Immigration Policy in the Trump Era, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020. Her work has also been published in various journals including the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics, International Migration Review, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Political Research Quarterly, Politics, Groups, & Identities, American Politics Research, Social Science Quarterly, Political Science Quarterly, and Urban Affairs Review, among others.
She is a co-founder and co-organizer of SPIRE, Symposium on the Politics of Immigration, Race, and Ethnicity, which is an annual conference of race, ethnicity, and politics scholars. She was the Director of the Washington Institute for the Study of Inequality and Race (WISIR) from 2019-2022 and was one of the editors of Political Research Quarterly from 2018-2022.
She is currently working two book projects. One entitled, United We Stand: Latino Representation in Congress, examines the ways legislators serve the interests of Latinos across a variety of legislative behaviors and the substantive impact of Latino representatives. The other, Immigration Reform: Failure and Success in Congress, examines the framing of immigration politics and policy in Congress and the conditions under which immigration legislation moves forward or stalls.