About Me

Dr. Maricela Bañuelos is a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley’s School of Education. She completed her PhD in Sociology at UC Irvine, her MA in Educational Policy and Social Context at UC Irvine, and her BA in Sociology at UC Santa Barbara. Maricela is a former Ford Predoctoral Fellow, NAED/Spencer Dissertation Fellow, and UC HSI DDI President’s Pre-Professoriate Fellow. Broadly, her research focuses on issues of higher education access and inclusion, social mobility, and social inequality. Currently, she is working on a longitudinal qualitative research project that focuses on the Latine doctoral pipeline and examines Latines’ nonlinear doctoral pathways and Latine doctoral peer support systems at Hispanic Serving Institutions.

As the daughter of Mexican immigrants who were limited to third-grade level educations in rural Zacatecas, Mexico, Maricela witnessed firsthand the way that systems of oppression can limit the life opportunities of people from her ethnic and socio-economic background. She strongly believes that everyone deserves an equal chance at self-realization, a belief that has motivated her to pursue a career in higher education. Her research and pedagogy centers the experiences and needs of historically underrepresented students.