Research Bio

Laurent Reyes is an assistant professor in the School of Social Welfare, a scholar in the Latinx and Democracy Cluster at UC Berkeley, and a member of UCSF Emancipatory Sciences Lab. She comes to UC Berkeley from Rutgers University, where she received her MSW and PhD in Social Work with emphasis on Health & Aging and Social Work with Latine communities.  

Dr. Reyes utilizes qualitative and visual methods to elevate the ongoing resistance and solidarity among BIPOC elders as they struggle to access community and health services and develop opportunities and solutions to meet community needs and improve conditions. The goal of this research is to re-imagine civic participation and shift socio-political focus and resources to support the solutions and innovations that BIPOC communities have developed to survive and thrive in the context of systemic oppression and ethnoracial persecution. To do this, Dr. Reyes works with community members, artists, and non-profit organizations to weave these stories and support the ongoing movement of liberation.

Publication Highlights:

Reyes, L. (2024). In Their Words: African American and Latine Immigrant Older Adults (Re) Define Civic Participation. The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, gbae143.

Reyes, L. (2023). Experiences of civic participation among older African American and Latinx immigrant adults in the context of an ageist and racist society. Research on aging, 45(1), 92-103.

Reyes, L., Scher, C. J., & Greenfield, E. A. (2023). Participatory Research Approaches in Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias Literature: A Scoping Review. Innovation in Aging, 7(7), igad091.

Reyes, L., Shellae Versey, H., & Yeh, J. (2022). Emancipatory visions: Using visual methods to co-construct knowledge with older adults. The Gerontologist, 62(10), 1402-1408.

 

 

Research Expertise and Interest

civic participation, community based research, visual methods, aging, immigration, Latinx older adults, Black older adults, intersectional life course perspective, systems of oppression, access to healthcare