Sophia Rodriguez is an Assistant Professor in the Minority and Urban Education specialization in the Teaching, Learning, Policy, and Leadership department at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Rodriguez's interdisciplinary scholarship, drawing on tools from education, anthropology, and sociology, asks questions about the social and cultural contexts of education policy and practice. Her integrated research agenda addresses issues related to racial equity, urban education and policy, and centralizes minoritized youth voices. The bulk of her recent work has examined the impact of immigration policy on the lives of undocumented youth in K-12 settings. A related strand of this research involves examining educators’ awareness of policies impacting immigrant students, especially those from mixed-status families or who are undocumented, and how educators’ awareness shapes their attitudes toward immigrant students.
Her two current longitudinal projects, funded by the Spencer and W.T. Grant Foundations (2018-2022) and the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), utilize mixed-methods and ethnographic designs to investigate how community-school partnerships, teachers, and school-based mental health professionals promote equity and advocate for undocumented (im)migrant and refugee youth. The IMLS project that focuses on newcomer migrant youth belonging was recently awarded the prestigious Library of Congress Literacy Award. Her scholarly work has appeared in Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Educational Policy, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Teachers College Record and Urban Education.
She was recently named a Visiting Scholar at Johns Hopkins University, School of Education (2020). Prior to being a faculty member at the University of Maryland, College Park, she was on the faculty at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro and the College of Charleston. Her current research about how school social workers promote equity for immigrant students, see: https://www.immigrantequityproject.org/