Vanesa Ribas

Vanesa Ribas is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. Her research focuses on race/ethnicity, migration, labor dynamics, political mobilization, and social inequalities. She conducted extensive ethnographic research at a North Carolina slaughterhouse, resulting in her award-winning book On the Line: Slaughterhouse Lives and the Making of the New South, which examines the intersection of Latino/a migrant labor and African American workers within the context of white supremacist structures. Ribas’s work highlights the exploitation, racial tensions, and labor organizing challenges in contemporary workplaces.

Her current projects include analyzing Puerto Rican political subjectivities through archival and ethnographic methods, exploring legacies of American social science in Puerto Rico. Ribas has published in top journals like American Sociological Review and Social Science and Medicine, emphasizing interdisciplinary approaches to labor and migration studies.

• Education: Ph.D. in Sociology (not explicitly stated in provided texts)

Ribas’s research awards include the ASA Labor and Labor Movements Book Award and an LASA Latino Studies Section Honorable Mention. Her work bridges theoretical insights with empirical rigor, particularly in documenting marginalized workers’ lived experiences.

She collaborates on interdisciplinary projects, including studies on mobility in care work and unconscious prejudice in educational settings. Her teaching focuses on applying sociological frameworks to understand systemic inequities in labor and migration contexts.