PhD Candidate in Education Policy, Organization & Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
About
Gabriel Rodriguez is a doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership. His research lies at the intersection of critical youth studies and Latina/o education, with an emphasis on Latina/o youth identity and culture, youth activism, and school belonging in suburban school contexts. He is currently a National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellow.
Rodriguez's dissertation research focuses on the experiences of students in suburban communities, adding to the literature on Latina/o youth that has largely focused on urban education. His research addresses two questions: 1) how do Latina/o youth negotiate and perform their identities (e.g., racial/ethnic, classed, gendered, legal, and linguistic)? and 2) what are the ways in which Latina/o youth build community? Through a critical ethnographic and performative lens, Rodriguez's research highlights multiplicities of Latina/o identity enacted in suburban landscapes.
A native of Franklin Park, Illinois a suburb outside of Chicago, he holds a BA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in political science and communication studies and an MA also from Illinois in political science with a concentration in civic leadership.
Current Work:
Currently, Rodriguez has a book chapter under review that discusses how a suburban high school created and denied opportunity to Latino male youth. The chapter reveals how schools can be sites of social death by policing the bodies and actions of male students in ways that ultimately lead them to resist dehumanizing practices. The second publication is under review at the American Educational Research Journal. In this piece, Rodriguez analyzes the intersection of race, space, and place by focusing on how Latina/o youth traverse their school and ultimately create spaces of their own to build community.
Research Area Keyword(s):
Latina/o education, critical youth studies, youth identity and culture, suburban education, youth activism
