Emonie Robinson

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Emonie Robinson, MSW (she/her, they/them) is a scholar, educator and advocate entering her first year of the doctoral program of Social Welfare in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Her research centers on social justice issues with particular focus on reproductive justice and the carceral system’s impact on Black communities. She is interested in examining how hospitals and healthcare systems perpetuate carcerality and contribute to the criminalization of Black birthing individuals.

Robinson recently earned her Master of Social Welfare from Luskin. During her graduate studies, she served as an Intern Data Analyst for the Human Services Department of the City of Santa Monica. In this role, she conducted community needs assessments and resource mapping. She was the first MSW student in the Social and Economic Justice concentration to participate in UCLA’s Racial Justice Pilot Program and proposed a racial justice lens to support the Human Services Department.

Robinson is involved with the Million Dollar Hoods project and contributes to research that maps the costs of incarceration in Los Angeles and highlights the disproportionate impact on Black and Brown communities. She is also a Teaching Assistant in UCLA’s Department of African American Studies and a peer mentor for the Academic Advancement Program’s (AAP) Transfer Summer Program. As a former elementary school teacher and educator, she has facilitated workshops and led discussions around equity and racial justice. Her pedagogy is rooted in the frameworks of Paulo Freire and bell hooks that emphhasize mutual learning, critical consciousness, and educational justice.
Beyond academia, Robinson serves as the MSW Student Board Member for the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) where she represents student interests at the national level. In this role, she advocates for equitable policies and contributes to the organization’s initiatives to advance social justice and support the next generation of social workers.

Emonie was born and raised in Bakersfield, CA. Her advocacy journey began in the bay area at Chabot College, where she became a student leader and transfer student advocate. As an undergraduate at UCLA, she served as the Afrikan Student Union’s (ASU) Transfer Coordinator and Community College Partnerships Mentor where she supported the needs of TAY foster youth, Black transfer students, undocumented students, and system-impacted students navigating higher education. She graduated during the pandemic with a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology and African American Studies.

Kelly Lytle Hernandez

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Professor Kelly Lytle Hernández is a professor of History, African American Studies, and Urban Planning at UCLA where she holds The Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair in History. One of the nation’s leading experts on race, immigration, and mass incarceration, she is the author of the award-winning books Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol (University of California Press, 2010), City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), and Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands (W. W. Norton, 2022). Her forthcoming book, Still Racist: U.S. Immigration Control since 1790, will be published by W. W. Norton in 2026. From 2017 to 2021, Professor Lytle Hernández served as the director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. As director of the Bunche Center, she led an unprecedented fundraising campaign and launched the Bunche Fellows Program. Professor Lytle Hernandez was also the founding director of the Million Dollar Hoods (MDH) research initiative, which maps fiscal and human cost of mass incarceration in Los Angeles. She now serves as a principal advisor to MDH. For her historical and contemporary work, Professor Lytle Hernández was named a 2019 MacArthur “Genius” Fellow. She is also an elected member of the Society of American Historians, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Pulitzer Prizes Board.

For speaking requests, please contact Rolisa Tutwyler at CCMNT Speakers Bureau at info@ccmntspeakers.com

For media requests, please contact Jessica Wolf (UCLA Media Relations) at jwolf@stratcomm.ucla.edu

Awards

2010 Clements Prize for Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol

Honorable Mention, 2011 Lora Romero First Book Prize, American Studies Association

Honorable Mention, 2011 John Hope Franklin Book Prize, American Studies Association

Finalist, 2011 First Book Prize from the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians

2007 Oscar O. Winther Award for the best article to appear in the Western Historical Quarterly.

2007 Bolton-Kinnaird Award for best article on the Spanish borderlands.

Selected Publications

“Hobos in Heaven: Race, Incarceration, and the Rise of Los Angeles, 1880 – 1910,” Pacific Historical Review v 83, n 3 (August 2014)

“Amnesty or Abolition: Felons, Illegals, and the Case for a New Abolition Movement,” Boom: A Journal of California (Winter 2011).

MIGRA! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol (University of California Press, 2010)

“An Introduction to el Archivo Histórico del Instituto Nacional de Migración,” co-authored with Pablo Yankelevich, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies v 34, n 1 (Spring 2009), 157-168.

“Persecuted Like Criminals”: The Politics of Labor Emigration and Mexican Migration Controls in the 1920s and 1930s,” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies v 34, n 1 (Spring 2009), 219-239.

“The Crimes and Consequences of Illegal Immigration: A Cross-Border Examination of Operation Wetback, 1943-1954,” Western Historical Quarterly (Winter 2006), 421-444.

“Ni blancos ni negros: mexicanos y el papel de la patrulla fronteriza estadounidense en la definición de una nueva categoría racial, 1924-1940,” Cuicuilco v 11, n 31 (Mayo-Agosto 2004): 85-104.

Mexican Immigration to the United States, 1900 – 1999: A Sourcebook for Teachers, published by the National Center for History in the Schools (Fall 2002).