Laura Chávez-Moreno

Laura Chávez-Moreno is an award-winning, qualitative social researcher and associate professor in the Departments of Chicana/o & Central American Studies and Education at the University of California, Los Angeles. Prof. Chávez-Moreno researches, writes, and teaches about Chicanx/Latinx education.  She works at the intersections of education, pedagogy, language, literacy, and ethnic studies, particularly Chicanx/Latinx Studies.

Dr. Chávez-Moreno’s multiple award-winning book, How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America, is available at all major book sellers and has been featured in multiple podcasts and popular media.

Her research has been published in top-tier journals such as Review of Educational Research, Educational Researcher (2022; 2025), American Educational Research Journal, Research in the Teaching of English, and Journal of Teacher Education (2015, 2021). Her research has been recognized with prestigious awards from organizations such as the American Educational Research Association and the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation and she was a fellow of the 2020–2022 cohort of NCTE Research Foundation’s Cultivating New Voices among Scholars of Color. In 2023, she received the Alan C. Purves Award from the National Council of Teachers of English for her article, “The continuum of racial literacies: Teacher practices countering whitestream bilingual education,” published in Research in the Teaching of English. This annual award honors the article deemed most significant in advancing the field. Recently, she was awarded the 2025 Early Career Award from the Critical Race Studies in Education Association and the 2026 American Sociological Association Section on Sociology of Education’s The Anna Julia Cooper Award, awarded every two years to an early career scholar to acknowledge exceptional research and/or service in efforts to address racial equity within the field of education.

Prof. Chávez-Moreno is sought after as a speaker by school districts, university organizations, and teacher preparation programs. She draws from her research and extensive teaching experience across a variety of educational levels—including elementary, secondary, tertiary, teacher education, and older-adult education. She worked as a high school teacher of Spanish in the School District of Philadelphia for five years, wrote district curriculum, and served on boards of community organizations. She is a member of the UC Faculty Association (affiliated with AAUP) and has been a long-time member of the American Federation of Teachers (through UCAFT, UW-Madison Teaching Assistants’ Association, and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers). She grew up in Douglas, Arizona, and Agua Prieta, Sonora, México.