Jessica Lopez-Espino

Jessica Lopez-Espino is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She specializes in law and society, linguistic anthropology, and child welfare law, with a focus on racialization and ethnographic methods.

• Education: Ph.D. from New York University

Her research examines how language ideologies, socioeconomic precarity, and racialization influence legal determinations of parental fitness in child welfare courts, particularly for Latinx families. She draws on sociolegal studies and Latinx Studies frameworks, conducting 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Northern California courts.

Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the American Bar Foundation. She publishes in journals such as American Anthropologist, Law and Social Inquiry, and Journal of Linguistic Anthropology.

• Scientific Awards:
  • National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program
  • American Bar Foundation support for interdisciplinary legal studies