Community Power Postdoctoral Scholar, USC Equity Research Institute
“Uriel Serrano is a vision for the future of sociology, specifically, and the academy, broadly. Uriel seamlessly weaves his research interests with youth of color organizing and the knowledge he gained outside of the academy to inform his community-engaged work. A brilliant theorist of intersectionality, Uriel is engaging in path-breaking work on the possibilities and impossibilities of intersectional theories, while maintaining a passionate commitment to creating spaces of resistance and belonging for marginalized academics. Uriel offers us all an inspirational model for how to move in the academy.” -Dr. Rocío R. García, Assistant Professor, T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics, Arizona State University
“Uriel Serrano is an exceptional scholar that is bound to be a thought-leader in sociology and education. His supportive and collaborative nature at conferences, his advocacy for students and colleagues of color and his sharp intellect has earned him esteem among his peers and other senior scholars. He is part of a burgeoning movement of interdisciplinary scholars that identify as the Du Bois Scholar Network – a movement rooted in the academic and public work of W.E.B. Du Bois. This foundation undoubtedly drives Mr. Serrano’s innovative work in the academy and beyond.” -Dr. Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Brown University.
I am an urban sociologist who uses mixed-methods to study inequality and resistance, particularly in the context of education, community organizing, and policing. I am especially interested in inequality and resistance at the intersection of race, gender, and age, and how subjectivity (emotions, trauma, healing, agency), community organizing, and organizational routines, rules, and processes relate to youth, policing, and society.
My research agenda on inequality and resistance focuses on three interrelated areas: 1) the slow violence of policing, specifically the role of policing in shaping emotions among youth; 2) the routines and rules of racialized organizations (e.g. schools, school boards, community organizations, and the police) that shape the lives of young people and their families; and 3) the social, political, and racial dimensions of community organizing, including processes and outcomes. Thus, my writing contributes to our understanding of the social conditions affecting low-income urban communities and the social actors striving to transform those realities.
Several of my publications have focused on how youth criminalization, including the routines and rules of schools and school boards, contributes to the slow violence of (school) policing. One of those publications, “Feeling Carcerality: How Carceral Seepage Shapes Racialized Emotions,” is amongst the most-cited recent articles in Social Problems.
In my role as a Community Power Postdoctoral Scholar, I lead community-engaged research on grassroots community organizations, youth workers, and educational justice movements. Here I draw on my ongoing collaborations with academic and community partners to focus on: 1) bridging theories and insights from social movement literature and critical data scholarship to examine the relationship between stories, data, technology, power, and community organizing; to understand the narratives, frames, strategies, and power-building practices of community organizers; and 3) document how community organizations serving youth improve their well-being and shape their transitions to adulthood.
My research and community-engaged projects have received generous support from The California Endowment, the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, the Ford Dissertation Fellowship, the University of California President’s Dissertation Fellowship, the American Sociological Association Minority Fellows Program, the Social Science Research Council, and the California State University Chancellor’s Dissertation Fellowship.
I was born and raised in a Los Angeles neighborhood known colloquially as “The Jungles.” I am proud to be the son of Mexican immigrants from Durango who have raised a family of educators and youth workers. I am the first in my immediate and extended family to earn a BA, MA, and a PhD, all of which inform my pedagogical approach as a professor and youth worker.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Serrano, Uriel. 2025. “Intersectional Learning: How Black and Latinx Boys Learn About Power and Difference.” Youth & Society, Online First.
Serrano, Uriel and Andrea Del Carmen Vazquez. 2025. “Safety” and “Protection” as Shared Grievances and Oblique Identification in Educational Organizations. Educational Researcher, Online First.
Serrano, Uriel. 2024. Feeling Carcerality: How Carceral Seepage Shapes Racialized Emotions. Social Problems, Online First.
Chang, Ethan, Serrano, Uriel, and Kasper, Julie. 2023. Allied Attestations: Troubling a Progressive Goodwill and ‘Duty to Speak Out’. Equity & Excellence in Education, 56(1-2), 129-143.
Serrano, Uriel. 2022. ‘Finding Home’: Campus Racial Microclimates and Academic Homeplaces at a Hispanic-Serving Institution. Race Ethnicity and Education, 25(6), 815-834.
Battle, Battle and Uriel Serrano. 2022. Toward a Du Boisian Paradigm of Family Science. Journal of Family Theory & Review, 14(3), 341-363.
Serrano, Uriel, David Turner III, Gabriel Regalado, Alejandro Banuelos. (2022). Towards Community Rooted Research and Praxis: Reflections on the BSS Safety and Youth Justice Project. Social Sciences, 11(5), 195.
TEACHING
Graduate Courses Taught: Sociology of Education (CSULA), Qualitative Methods (CSULA) and History of Education (CSULA).
Undergraduate Teaching Associate: Introductory Sociology (UCLA), Race and the University (UCLA), Contemporary Social Theory (UCSC), and Research Methods (UCSC).
Links of Interest
Carceral Seepage and Healing Narratives: A Conversation with Rasheeda Imani Jones
How a Coalition Creates Paths to Healing
E-mail: urielser at usc dot edu
Uriel Serrano 