Leslie Patricia Luqueño

Bio

Leslie Patricia Luqueño is a 5th-year doctoral candidate at Stanford's Graduate School of Education, specializing in the Sociology of Education. She holds an M.A. in Sociology from Stanford University and a B.A. with honors in Anthropology and Educational Studies from Haverford College. Her research interests lie at the intersection of migration, higher education, and family studies, with a focus on the experiences of the children of immigrants within higher education. Particularly, she is interested in how the children of migrants develop unique pockets of familial and experiential knowledge that help them survive and thrive at college institutions. Furthermore, she is deeply committed to advancing qualitative research methods within sociology and expanding the use of autoethnography, community-based participatory research, and Chicana feminist methodology within the discipline.

Leslie's dissertation is titled "College is a Familia Occasion: How Latinx Immigrant Families Navigate the Transition toward Higher Education." In her two-year qualitative, longitudinal study, she follows a group of Latinx parents and students as they go through the college application process and transition into the first year of college, learning deeply about how the transition shapes familial dynamics and relationships as well as how family affects educational change. Utilizing her novel conceptual framework, immigrant legacies, Leslie delves into how immigration familial histories manifest and the ways in which they inform how families support each other during this critical point of change. Using qualitative interviews, participant-observation, oral histories, and autoethnographic vignettes, Leslie's book-length dissertation centers families as experts of their lived experiences and cultivates a community-engaged research methodology that contributes to the organizations and people Leslie works with alongside in this project. As a first-generation-to-college Latina student from a working-class, immigrant family herself, Leslie is dedicated to the expansion of justice and equity within higher education and engages in research projects that will have real-life impact on the communities she works with.

Honors & Awards

• Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, Ford Foundation (07/01/2024)
• Diversity Dissertation Research Opportunity, Stanford University (06/01/2024)
• Best Scholarly Paper Award, American Association for Hispanics in Higher Education (04/08/2024)
• Distinguished Graduate Student Paper Award, Pacific Sociological Association (03/23/2024)
• Research, Impact, and Action through Strategic Engagement (RAISE) Doctoral Fellowship, Stanford University (06/01/2022)
• McCoy Family Center for Ethics Graduate Fellowship, Stanford University (07/30/2021)
• Haas Center Graduate Public Service Fellowship, Stanford University (07/07/2021)
• Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship, Ford Foundation (03/22/2021)
• North American Winning Undergraduate Paper in Law/Legal Studies, The Global Undergraduate Awards (09/01/2020)
• Highly Commended Undergraduate Paper in Sociology/Social Policy, The Global Undergraduate Awards (09/01/2020)
• Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE) Fellowship, Stanford University (06/01/2020)
• Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity Fellowship, Stanford University (06/01/2020)
• Dell Scholars Continuing Graduate Student Scholarship, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation (06/01/2020)
• Departmental Honors in Anthropology, Haverford College (05/27/2020)
• Hispanic Scholarship Fund Scholar, Hispanic Scholarship Fund (06/01/2019, 06/01/2020)
• Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, Haverford College (05/10/2018)

Professional Affiliations and Activities

• Committee Member, Haverford College Young Alumni Action Group (2022 - Present)
• Predoctoral Fellow, Ford Foundation (2021 - Present)
• Graduate Student Fellow, McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society (2021 - Present)
• Graduate Student Fellow, Haas Center for Public Service (2021 - Present)
• Graduate Fellow, Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (2020 - Present)
• Member, Leadership Alliance - Early Identification Program (2019 - Present)
• Undergraduate Fellow, Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (2018 - 2020)

Education & Certifications

• M.A., Stanford University, Sociology (2022)
• B.A., Haverford College, Anthropology (honors), Educational Studies (2020)