Born and raised in the East Los Angeles barrio of Boyle Heights, Chris Zepeda-Millán was the first Chicano to receive a Ph.D. from the Department of Government at Cornell University. His research has been published in top political science and interdisciplinary academic journals, such as the American Journal of Political Science (AJPS), Political Research Quarterly (PRQ), Politics, Groups and Identities (PGI), Critical Sociology, the Chicana/o Latina/o Law Review, Social Science Quarterly (SSQ), and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (JEMS). His first book, Latino Mass Mobilization: Immigration, Racialization, and Activism (Cambridge University Press) received multiple national honors, including the prestigious Ralph J. Bunche “Best Book on Ethnic and Cultural Pluralism Award” from the American Political Science Association (APSA), the “Best Book on Race and Immigration Award” from the Race, Ethnicity, and Politics (REP) Section of the APSA, and the coveted “Charles Tilly Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book Award” from the American Sociological Association’s Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements. He is currently working on multiple research projects, including a co-authored book tentatively titled Walls, Cages, and Family Separation: Immigration Policy in the Time of Trump (2020).
As a publicly engaged scholar, Professor Zepeda-Millán has been interviewed by several local, national, and international media outlets. His public intellectual work includes working with local and national community organizations, publishing op-eds in local newspapers across the country, and being an invited contributor to NBC News, Latino Decisions, the London School of Economics’ USA blog, The Progressive magazine, and The Huffington Post. Professor Zepeda-Millan has also been involved in various social movements related to environmental and global justice, labor, student, immigrant, and indigenous rights.
Prior to joining the Departments of Public Policy and Chicana/o Studies and becoming the Director of Faculty Research for the Latino Policy & Politics Initiative (LPPI) at UCLA, Professor Zepeda-Millán was a Provost Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago, as well as a faculty member at Loyola Marymount University and UC Berkeley, where he chaired the Center for Research on Social Change.