Dr. María G. Rendón is an associate professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Public Policy at Unversity of California, Irvine. She studies how Latinos are incorporated into American cities, examining how immigration, race, and class intersects with neighborhood and school processes to shape Latinx opportunities and social mobility. She is the award-winning author of Stagnant Dreamers: How the Inner City Shapes the Integration of Second-Generation Latinos (Russell Sage Foundation, 2019). Her new book project is a historical case study centered in the city of Long Beach and its surrounding area that examines how multilayered policies and local practices of racial exclusion shaped Mexicans integration over time and across generations there. In other research, she examines STEM disparities in higher education and environmental justice issues affecting the Latinx community. Rendón received her Ph.D. in Sociology and Social Policy from Harvard University. She is the director of the Urban and Environmental Planning and Policy Ph.D. program, which trains diverse scholars, many who are first-generation, women, and Latinx. She is a child of Mexican immigrants born and raised in the Los Angeles area who attended its public schools. Her upbringing in a Black and Latino immigrant working class neighborhood continues to inspire her work.
