Research Description

Nicholas Vargas is an Associate Professor of Chicanx/Latinx Studies in the Department Ethnic Studies. He currently co-leads the Latinxs and Democracy Cluster and serves as Faculty Co-Director of the UCB Latino Social Science Pipeline Initiative (LSSPI), both of which aim to advance Latinx social science scholarship and strengthen academic pipelines.

Vargas' research is situated primarily in the social sciences with foci on ethnoracial classification, identification, and stratification. Most of his scholarship draws from nationally representative data and explores questions of ethnoracial boundaries, patterns of label use, racial ideology adherence, contested racial identity, and Latina/o/x experiences in higher education with particular attention paid to various organizational and individual markers of racialization. Methodologically, his core aim is to think critically about the utility of race data for identifying and rectifying societal, systemic, and structural racisms.

Vargas serves on the National Advisory Committee of the U.S. Census Bureau, and as Deputy Editor of the journal Sociology of Race and Ethnicity. Prior to UCB, Vargas was Coordinator of Latino Studies at the University of Florida’s (UF) Center for Latin American Studies, Associate Professor of Sociology at UF, and Assistant Professor in the School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas.