Liz Koslov

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Liz Koslov is Assistant Professor of Urban Planning, Environment and Sustainability, and Sociology at UCLA. Her research brings an interdisciplinary ethnographic approach to analyzing the politics of urban climate change adaptation, particularly debates over how to respond to sea-level rise, flooding, and wildfire. At UCLA she teaches on climate change through the lens of the built environment, the social life of sea-level rise, and environmental and climate justice.

Much of Dr. Koslov’s work critically examines the idea and process of “managed retreat” from high-risk areas. She is writing a book, Retreat: Moving to Higher Ground in a Climate-Changed City, that follows homeowners in Staten Island, New York, who organized to seek buyouts after Hurricane Sandy that would permanently demolish portions of their neighborhoods. With funding from the National Science Foundation, she leads a collaborative project on the intersection of managed retreat and wildfire (see also this New York Times guest essay). Additional interests include the shifting meanings of urban natures, the politics of risk mapping, and media and climate change.

Before coming to UCLA, Dr. Koslov was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities and Comparative Media Studies/Writing at MIT. She received a PhD in Media, Culture, and Communication from NYU, where she was affiliated with the Institute for Public Knowledge and the Superstorm Research Lab, a mutual-aid research collective studying climate change, disaster, inequality, and urban politics. She holds an MSc in Culture and Society from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a BA in Communication and Spanish and Latin American Literatures from the George Washington University.

Amada Armenta

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Amada Armenta’s research examines the connections between the immigration enforcement system and the criminal justice system, and the implications of this connection for immigrants, bureaucracies, and cities.

Her award-winning book, “Protect Serve and Deport: The Rise of Policing as Immigration Enforcement” (University of California Press, 2017), analyzes the role of local law enforcement agencies in immigration enforcement in Nashville, Tennessee. Currently, she is working on her second book project, an examination of the legal attitudes of unauthorized Mexican immigrants in Philadelphia.

Dr. Armenta’s research has been published in journals of sociology, law and society, and policy. She has received research funding from the American Sociological Association, the National Science Foundation, the American Society of Criminology, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Prior to joining Luskin as a faculty member, she was an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Amy Ritterbusch

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Dr. Amy E. Ritterbusch is an Associate Professor of Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Her work illuminates both the theory and practice of participatory action research (PAR), invoking the Latin American origins of this mode of inquiry, and focuses on multiple forms of state violence perpetrated against what she and activist co-authors refer to as ‘street-connected’ communities, including children and youth who depend on the streets for survival in the absence of other caring structures. Dr. Ritterbusch leads PAR collectives in Colombia and Uganda that work in solidarity with street-connected-communities against police violence and forced displacement.

The urgency of action, from the streets toward policy, is a key focus of Dr. Ritterbusch’s scholarship, and her work offers methodological and theoretical insights on how to do PAR with historically marginalized communities in ways that repel extractive, unilateral, and colonial modes of traditional scientific inquiry.  Throughout her research and teaching career, she has explored different forms of radical accompaniment of social leaders on the frontlines in the global South and continues to imagine new pathways forward toward a Fals Bordian ciencia popular involving the collective work of movements and academics in protective spaces that grow in distance from both the non-profit and academic industrial complex.

Dr. Ritterbusch’s scholarship involves public intellectual work in the global South including human rights shadow reports, street-level organizing and collective writing that seeks to influence policy outcomes for social justice. Her research has been funded by the Open Society Foundations, the National Science Foundation, the Fulbright U.S. Program and other networks promoting global social justice.

 

Selected Collective and Individual Publications:

Correa-Salazar, C., Martínez, L., Maldonado Salamanca, D., Ruiz, Y., Rocío Guarín, L.,  Hernández Guarín, A.,  & Ritterbusch, A. (2022) Reflections on activism, the academy and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex in Colombia: What a revolutionary ethos might look like, Global Public Health

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2022.2042354

Ritterbusch, A., Simbaqueba Gomez, A.L., Restrepo, J., Montes, N., Rentería, C., Velazco, Y., García Jaramillo, S. & Maldonado, D. (2021). Growing Up Guerreándola: On Adolescent Formations of Conscientização in Colombia. The Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare 48(4): 118-146.

DOI: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw/vol48/iss4/7

Ritterbusch, A., Pinzon, E., Reyes, R., Pardo, J., Jaime, D., Correa-Salazar, C. (2020). ‘I feel safer in the streets than at home’: Rethinking harm reduction for women in the urban margins. Global Public Health. 15(10): 1479-1495.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2020.1751234

Ritterbusch, A. & El Cilencio. (2020). ‘We will always be street’: Remembering the L in Bogotá, Colombia. City. 24(1-2): 210-219.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2020.1739915

Ritterbusch, A., Boothby, N., Mugumya, F., Wanican, J., Bangirana, C.,   Nyende, N., Ampumuza, D., Apota, J.  & Meyer, S. (2020). Pushing the Limits of Child Participation in Research and Policy-Making: Reflections from a Youth-Driven Participatory Action Research (YPAR) Initiative in Uganda. International  Journal of  Qualitative Methods. 19:1-12.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406920958962

Ritterbusch, A. (2019). Empathy at Knifepoint: The Dangers of Research and Lite Pedagogies for Social Justice Movements. Antipode 51(4): 1296-1317.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12530

Human Rights Reports

Comisión Ciudadana Nacional e Internacional (National and International Citizen Commission). (2022). “En Colombia Nos Volvimos Cifras”: Informe para el esclarecimiento de los hechos occuridos el 9, 10 y 11 de septiembre de 2020 en Bogotá y Soacha [In Colombia We Became Numbers’: Shadow Report for the Historical Clarification of the [Police Brutalities] Occurring on the 9th, 10th and 11th of September of 2020 in Bogotá and Soacha]. Bogotá: CCEEU (La Coordinación Colombia Europa Estados Unidos) Available online:

https://www.cinep.org.co/es/informe-en-colombia-nos-volvimos-cifras/

https://coeuropa.org.co/en-colombia-nos-volvimos-cifras/

Simbaqueba, A., Restrepo, J. & Ritterbusch, A. (2020). Vidas y territorios en disputa: dolor, memoria y lucha de la población LGBTI en las laderas [Lives and territories in dispute: Pain, memory and struggle of the LGBTQ community in the urban margins]. National Truth Commission. Bogotá, Colombia.

Available online: https://issuu.com/vidas_territorios_en_disputa/docs/vidas_y_territorios_en_disputa_–_dolor__memoria_y

Blandón, T., Espinosa, J., González, T., Camacho Iannini, S.I., Juanita, Llano Agudelo, A., Fonseca, C., González Coy, P., Guardiola Navarro, A.C., Leguízamo Parales, M.V., Maldonado Salamanca, D., Pérez, C., Pérez, G., Romero, A., Ruiz, Y., Salamanca Cortés, J., Sarasty, A.S., Uribe Durán, S., Victoria Mena, P., Weinstein, L., Summer, V., Ritterbusch, A. & González, M. (2019). Sueños furiosos: Aportes para la construcción de una agenda política trans [Furious Dreams: Contributions for the Construction of a Trans Political Agenda]. Institute on Inequality and Democracy. Luskin School of Public Affairs, UCLA.

Available online:

https://challengeinequality.luskin.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2019/09/Ritterbusch-Amy-SUE%C3%91OS-FURIOSOS.pdf

Tovar, M., Trejos, C., Giraldo, Y., Delgado, G., Lanz, A., Lanz, S., León, S., Lloreda, A., Pardo, L., Morales, A., Salamanca, J & Ritterbusch, A. (2017). Destapando la olla: Informe sombra sobre la intervención en el Bronx [Uncovering the Pot: Shadow Report on the [Police] Intervention in El Bronx]. Bogotá: Impresol Ediciones.

Available online:

https://issuu.com/cpat_ong/docs/destapando_la_olla_

Cubides Kovacsics, M.I., Lloreda, A., Pardo, L., Picasso, N., Lanz, A., Ritterbusch, A., Montoya, M.J., Guzmán, Y., Cocomá, A., Rubianogroot, M., Vargas, M.A., Chaux, S. (2016). Ley Entre Comillas: Informe de Derechos Humanos del Observatorio de Trabajo Sexual [. Bogotá: Parces – PAIIS.

Available online:

https://issuu.com/adrianamarialloreda/docs/ley_entre_comillas_informe_ddhh_tra

Chris Zepeda-Millán

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Biography:

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. His second book, co-authored with Sophia Wallace (University of Washington), is titled Walls, Cages, and Family Separation: Race and Immigration Policy in the Trump Era (2020), was also published by Cambridge University Press.

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 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. He is currently the chair of UCLA’s Labor Studies Program as well as the founder and faculty director of the UCLA Strategic Research Lab.

Courses:

Immigration Policy
 Labor Organizing

Unions in American Politics
 Social Movements
 Racial Politics

Latinx Labor

Latino Politics
 Interdisciplinary Research Methods

Books:

Latino Mass Mobilization: Immigration, Racialization, and Activism (Cambridge University Press 2017)

Walls, Cage & Family Separation: Race and Immigration Policy in the Trump Era (Cambridge University Press 2020)

 

Selected Articles & Book Chapters:

“The U.S. Immigrant Rights Movement.” With Ramon Garibaldo Valdez. Contemporary Social Movements. Eds. Doug McAdam, David Snow, and Dana Moss (Wiley Blackwell 2026).

 

“Contesting Borders in the ‘Age of Migration’: Progressive Border Activism in the U.S. & Europe.”

With Elias Steinhilper and Moritz Sommer. Handbook on Progressive Politics. Ed. Alice Mattoni (Elgar Publishing 2025).

 

“Do Latinos Still Support Immigrant Rights Activism? Examining Latino Attitudes a Decade After the 2006 Protest Wave.”

With Sophia Wallace. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (JEMS). Vol. 46 (4): 770-790, 2020.

 

“Mobilizing for Immigrant Rights Under Trump.”

With Sophia Wallace. The Resistance: The Dawn of the Anti-Trump Opposition Movement. Eds. David S. Meyer and Sidney Tarrow (Oxford University Press 2018).

 

“The Political Effects of Having Undocumented Parents: How Parental Illegality Impacts the Political Behavior of their U.S.-Born Children.”

With Alex Street and Michael Jones-Correa. Political Research Quarterly. Vol. 70 (4): 818-832, 2017.

 

“The Impact of Large-Scale Collective Action on Latino Perceptions of Commonality and Competition with African-Americans.”

With Michael Jones-Correa and Sophia Wallace. Social Science Quarterly (SSQ), Vol. 97 (2): 458-475, 2016.

 

“Weapons of the (Not So) Weak: Immigrant Mass Mobilization in the U.S. South.”

Critical Sociology, Vol. 42 (2): 269-287, 2016.

 

“Mass Deportation and the Future of Latino Partisanship.”

With Alex Street and Michael Jones-Correa. Social Science Quarterly (SSQ), Vol. 96 (2): 540-552, 2015.

 

“Perceptions of Threat, Demographic Diversity, and the Framing of Illegality: Explaining (non)Participation in New York’s 2006 Immigrant Protests.”

Political Research Quarterly (PRQ), 67(4): 880-888, 2014.

 

“Triangulation in Social Movement Research.”

With Phil M. Ayoub and Sophia J. Wallace. Methodological Practices In Social Movement Research. Donatella della Porta (Ed.), Oxford University Press, 2014. 

 

“Spatial and Temporal Proximity:  Examining the Effects of the 2006 Immigrant Rights Marches on Political Attitudes.”

With Sophia Wallace and Michael Jones-Correa. American Journal of Political Science (AJPS), 58(2): 433-448, 2014.

 

“Racialization in Times of Contention:  How Social Movements Influence Latino Racial Identity.”

With Sophia Wallace. Politics, Groups, and Identities (PGI), 1(4): 510-527, 2013. 

 

Emily Weisburst

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I am an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles. My research focuses on topics in labor economics and public finance, including criminal justice and education.

I recently earned my Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Texas at Austin. While in graduate school, I worked as a Staff Economist at the Council of Economic Advisers in the Executive Office of the President and as a research associate for the RAND Corporation on joint projects with the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. I have also received the NAED Spencer Dissertation Fellowship to support my research on the impact of funding for police in public schools on student disciplinary outcomes and educational attainment in Texas.

My research interests include understanding factors that impact police decision-making and public trust in police. I am also interested in how interactions with the criminal justice system affect individuals, families and communities. A recent paper examines how much police discretion matters to law enforcement outcomes, after accounting for offense context. In this project, I find that the likelihood that an incident results in an arrest critically depends on the officer that shows up to respond to an offense reported through a police call for service.

For more information about my work, check out my website: emilyweisburst.com

Natalie Bau

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Natalie Bau is a Professor of Economics and Public Policy at UCLA. She is an economist studying topics in development and education economics and is particularly interested in the industrial organization of educational markets. She has studied private schooling and teacher compensation in Pakistan, the relationship between negotiation skills and girls’ educational outcomes in Zambia, and the interactions between educational investment and cultural traditions in Indonesia, Zambia, and Ghana.

Dr. Bau received her PhD in Public Policy from Harvard University, and is currently an affiliate of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and the Centre for Economic Policy and Research.  Prior to joining UCLA, she was an assistant professor of economics at the University of Toronto.

Personal Academic Website.

Martin Gilens

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Martin Gilens is a Professor of Public Policy, Political Science, and Social Welfare at UCLA. His research examines representation, public opinion, and mass media, especially in relation to inequality and public policy. Professor Gilens is the author of Affluence & Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America, and Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy, and coauthor (with Benjamin I. Page) of Democracy in America?: What Has Gone Wrong and What We Can Do about It. He has published widely on political inequality, mass media, race, gender, and welfare politics. He earned a Ph.D. in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and has held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and the Russell Sage Foundation. Professor Gilens is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and taught at Yale and Princeton universities before joining the Luskin School at UCLA in 2018. 

Click here for more information about Professor Gilens and his work.

Click here to make an appointment with Professor Gilens.

Ayako Miyashita Ochoa

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Ayako Miyashita Ochoa is an Adjunct Professor at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, Department of Social Welfare.  She serves as Co-Director of Luskin’s new Center, UCLA Hub for Health Intervention, Policy and Practice (UCLA HHIPP).  UCLA HHIPP’s mission is to co-create research that informs policy and practice and addresses intersecting oppressions in order to improve community health. As Co-Director for the Southern California HIV/AIDS Policy Research Center (SCHPRC), Professor Miyashita collaborates on interdisciplinary research with community and academic partners to bring the most relevant and timely evidence to bear on California’s efforts to develop and maintain efficient, cost-effective, and accessible programs and services to people living with or at risk for HIV, viral hepatitis, sexually transmitted infections and overdose.  Her research interests focus on HIV and other related health disparities at the intersection of race/ethnicity, sexual and gender identity, and migrant status.

In addition to serving as a faculty representative to the LGBTQ Affairs Committee at UCLA, Professor Miyashita is Co-Director of the Policy Impact Core for UCLA Center for HIV Identification, Prevention and Treatment Services (CHIPTS) as well as a Faculty Affiliate of UCLA California Center for Population Research (CCPR). Her teaching includes courses at UCLA Luskin, including LGBTQ Health, Law and Public Policy, Education and the Law, and Social Welfare Law and Ethics—a newly designed course.

Prior to joining the faculty at UCLA Luskin, Professor Miyashita directed the Los Angeles HIV Law and Policy Project, a legal services collaborative dedicated to addressing the unmet legal needs of primarily low-income people living with HIV (“PLWH”) in Los Angeles County.  As a Director in the Clinical and Experiential Learning Department at UCLA School of Law, Professor Miyashita taught courses on the attorney-client relationship, client interviewing and counseling, and HIV law and policy. As the HIV Law and Policy Fellow at the Williams Institute in 2013-2015, her research included studies on HIV criminalization, unmet legal needs of PLWH in addition to issues related to HIV privacy and confidentiality.

In her legal practice, Professor Miyashita provided direct legal services to low-income clients living with HIV in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles counties. This included assisting clients in obtaining disability benefits and other supports necessary to live independently. Her legal expertise runs a broad spectrum of public benefits including income support, health coverage, and other support services necessary for individuals living with disabilities. Professor Miyashita regularly provides training and education to clients, advocates, health and social service providers, and legislative and policymaking bodies.

Professor Miyashita earned her Juris Doctor from U.C. Berkeley School of Law and was admitted to the State Bar of California in 2009.

Walker Wells

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Walker Wells is Executive Director of Global Green USA, a national non-profit organization headquartered in Santa Monica.   He works with cities, neighborhoods, and community development organizations across the country to further green building and sustainable development practices through technical guidance, stakeholder facilitation, and development of innovative polices and programs.

Wells is a certified urban planner, a LEED Accredited Professional and a Green Rater. He served as an appointed member of the State of California Green Building Code Advisory Committee from 2010-2014, is and a lecturer in Green Urbanism at the Claremont Colleges and the UCLA Urban Planning Program.

Wells is a 2013 Fulbright Fellow with the Royal Institute of Technology Urban Planning Program in Stockholm, a 2012 Pritzker Fellow at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, and co-author of the 2007 book Blueprint for Greening Affordable Housing.

Wells holds Bachelor’s degrees in Sociology and Environmental Studies from the University of California Santa Barbara and a Master’s of City and Regional from the California Polytechnic University San Luis Obispo. He studied at Lund University and the Lund PolyTechnic Institute School of Architecture in Sweden. Prior to joining Global Green Mr. Wells was a Senior Urban Designer with Gruen Associates in Los Angeles, a Planner with the City of Santa Monica, and an Urban Planner for the City of Malmo, Sweden.