Maria de Jesus Mora is an ABD doctoral student in the Sociology Graduate Program. Originally from the Salinas Valley, she received her BA and MA in Sociology from the University of California, Merced in 2014 and 2016, respectively. As an undergraduate, she participated in the Latino Leadership Initiative at Harvard University. She also actively engaged in several student organizations, including Hermanas Unidas. Maria's dissertation research explores immigrant rights campaigns against political and repressive threats in order to better understand how low‐income Latino immigrant communities are able to sustain mobilization over the long‐term at the local level. This research is being carried out in seven cities in the San Joaquin Valley using interview and archival data with funding support from UCMEXUS. Maria was named one of the 2018 Young Movement Scholars and invited to present her research at the annual conference at the Center for the Study of Social Movements at the University of Notre Dame. She has published her work on immigrant movements and excluded groups with Sociology Compass and the CLACSO Handbook on Latin American Social Movements.
