Contact
I can be reached by email at lejessicaphd@gmail.com
Also, follow me on Twitter @anthlopezespino
Posts page
Events
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Past Events
| Nov 2020 | “Re-Hearing Stereotypes: Raciolinguistic Ideologies of Spanish Speakers in a California Child Welfare Court.” Invited talk for The Linguistic Anthropology Laboratory, Dept. Anthropology, UC San Diego. |
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| May 2020 | “The Management of Risky Parents: Evaluating Noncompliance in Child Welfare Cases.” Law & Society Association. |
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| Nov 2019 | “Establishing Jurisdiction: Conflicts in Ideologies of Adequate Parental Care in California.” American Anthropological Association. |
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| Sep 2019 | “Managing the Boundaries of Parenthood.” Invited presentation. American Bar Foundation Seminar Series. Chicago, IL. |
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| Nov 2018 | “Linguistic Hierarchies in Family Reunification: Barriers to ‘Good’ Parenting in U.S. Juvenile Court.” American Anthropological Association. |
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| Oct 2018 | “Linguistic Sympathy among Interpreters in Juvenile Court.” Jurilinguistics II Conference, Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Language and Law. University Pablo de Olavide, Spain. |
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| Dec 2017 | “Language Barriers in a U.S Juvenile Dependency Court.” Transnational Law Summer Institute, Reproduction, Alienation, Intervention. University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. |
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| June 2015 | “English vs. Spanglish: Language Contact in East Los Angeles.” Jeunes Cherchers en Science du Langage, Contact de Langues. Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France. |
Publications
Consulting
I have experience consulting for GreatNonProfits through the LUCA Community-Based Address Canvassing. I produced Canvassing Training Guide for LUCA (Local Update of Census Addresses) Initiative to reduce undercount of immigrants and other minoritized groups in the 2020 U.S. Census. Results of pilots conducted in Fresno and San Jose in Dec 2017 and Jan 2018 enhanced the census address list by 4-6%, representing $100 million in census driven-federal program funding.
I have also assisted child welfare courts in revising their public materials for increased accessibility to English-dominant and Spanish-dominant members of the public.
I am available for independent consulting on issues concerning language accessibility, program design for inclusion and protection of vulnerable populations, and organizational assessments. Email me at lejessicaphd@gmail.com with details about how I might be able to support your organizational goals.
Teaching
My research and teaching goals are centered around the possibilities that analytical examination of taken-for-granted ideas about race, law, and language can inform transformative change. I seek to provide students with an opportunity to consider how current structures for attaining justice, restitution, acknowledgment, and reparations might be re-imagined and re-built. In my mentoring of first-generation undergraduate students for the American Bar Foundation summer research program, I have encouraged students to engage with research questions about law that are also of interest to affected communities. In encouraging students to do research on beliefs about fairness and justice through the law from the perspective of stakeholders, I emphasize that engaged research that centers questions that matter to the participants of the research simultaneously enhance the scope and significance of social science research.
I teach Sociology of Law at the undergraduate and graduate levels and a course on The Power of Language in Society. Future courses will include Law and Language, Discourse Analysis, and Introduction to Semiotics.
Research
I ethnographically investigate racialization of Latinx communities, legal processes, and experiences related to social legitimacy and distribution of social services. My research and writing attends closely to how language practices influence how law is experienced and enacted.
My research project based on 18 months of ethnographic observation of a California child welfare court is the basis for my working book project. In this manuscript, Hearing Child Welfare: Ideologies of Latinx Parenthood in a California Juvenile Dependency Court, I outline how the construction and circulation of institutional narratives characterize low-income, Spanish-dominant, and Latinx families as routinely placing children “at risk” of harm, challenging the ability of parents to maintain or regain custody of their children. I argue that this has important implications for broader imaginaries about what minimally-fit parenting should look like and who is deemed suitable to raise future citizens of the United States.
My next project tentatively titled Raised by the State: First and Second Generation Latinx Youth in the Foster Care System, will explore how Latinx youth who have been removed from their biological parents’ custody develop their sense of identity in relation to ideas of ethnicity, language practices, and state services.