Tanya Golash-Boza is the Founder of the Racism, Capitalism, and the Law Lab and a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Merced. Prior to arriving at UC Merced, she was an Assistant Professor of Sociology and American Studies at the University of Kansas.
Tanya Golash-Boza is a prolific author. She has published five sole-authored books, two edited books, and over 60 articles and book chapters. In addition, she has published dozens of OpEds and essays in popular venues.
Many of her publications have received awards, including her latest book Deported: Immigrant Policing, Disposable Labor and Global Capitalism, which was awarded the Distinguished Contribution to Research Book Award from the Latino/a Studies Section of the American Sociological Association. She also won an article award from that same section for “Dropping the Hyphen: Becoming Latino(a)-American through Racialized Assimilation.” Additionally, she won the Distinguished Early Career Award from the Racial and Ethnic Minorities Studies Section of the American Sociological Association in 2010. In 2017, she won an Honorable Mention for the Best Article Award from the Race, Class, Gender Section of the American Sociological Association.
Tanya Golash-Boza’s scholarship ranges from issues of race and identity in Peru to human rights to immigration policy and deportation. Her latest book Deported (New York University Press 2015) explains mass deportation in the context of the global economic crisis. Due Process Denied (Routledge 2012) describes how and why non-citizens in the United States have been detained and deported for minor crimes, without regard for constitutional limits on disproportionate punishment. Immigration Nation (Paradigm 2012), provides a critical analysis of the impact that U.S. immigration policy has on human rights. Yo Soy Negro: Blackness in Peru (University Press of Florida 2011) explores discourses of blackness and racial identity in Peru. Her textbook, Race and Racisms: A Critical Approach (Oxford University Press 2015; 2018) provides a critical overview of contemporary race scholarship. Her most recent research includes a project on how formerly incarcerated people experience gentrification, and is funded by the National Science Foundation.
She’s shared her research with public audiences at influential venues such as the 92nd Street Y, Politics and Prose, and KramerBooks. The Economic Policy Institute hosted a panel discussion on Deported. In addition, she has published essays and OpEds in Newsweek, Al Jazeera, The Boston Review, The Nation, Boom, Univision, San Francisco Chronicle, Counterpunch, The Houston Chronicle, Salon, Le Monde Diplomatique, Inside Higher Ed, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Alternet, and other venues. Her column, “Five charts show why mandatory minimum sentences don’t work” was featured in PBS NewsHour.
She has appeared on CNN en Español and Press TV (Iran) as well as multiple public radio segments including the “The Kathleen Dunn Show” on Wisconsin Public Radio; “Top of Mind” on BYU radio; and “A Public Affair” on WORT 89.9 FM. For this and other outreach work, Professor Golash-Boza was awarded the UC Merced Senate Faculty Award for Distinguished Scholarly Public Service in 2013.
Professor Golash-Boza enjoys sharing her insights into faculty productivity and well-being and has given workshops at several university campuses. She regularly delivers workshops on publishing, work-life balance, creativity, and productivity. Her mentoring blog, Get a Life, PhD, has over 4 million pageviews. She is currently the Principal Investigator on a Mellon grant that provides mentoring resources for junior faculty at UC Merced. In 2019, she was awarded the UC Merced Senate Award for Excellence in Faculty Mentorship for her extensive mentoring work at UC Merced and beyond.
Tanya Golash-Boza is an innovative teacher and teaches classes on race, immigration, globalization, and human rights. She also created a graduate class on Writing and Publishing that helps graduate students complete their M.A. thesis in a timely fashion in addition to learning the ropes of the publishing industry.
Tanya Golash-Boza is a dynamic and engaging speaker. She has given several keynote addresses and dozens of plenaries and invited lectures. She is also multilingual and has given academic presentations in Spanish, Portuguese, and French.
Professor Golash-Boza is a leader on campus and beyond. She was the Inaugural Chair of the Senate Committee on Diversity and Equity at UC Merced. In that role, she created the Faculty Equity Advisor Program at UC Merced, which was launched in the Fall of 2016. She is the former Chair of the UC Systemwide Committee on Affirmative Action, Diversity, & Equity. She has served an elected Member-at-Large of the Council of the American Sociological Association and as the Chair of two Sections of that Association: the Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities (SREM) and the Section on Political Economy of World-Systems (PEWS). In 2019-20, she served as Chair of Public Health at UC Merced. She is currently a member of the Editorial Committee of the University of California Press.
Tanya Golash-Boza earned her B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1995, a Certificate of Anthropology from L’Ecole d’Anthropologie in Paris in 1996, and her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2005. She speaks fluent French, Spanish, and Portuguese and lives in Merced, California with her husband and three children.
Brief bio for speaking engagements:
Tanya Golash-Boza is the founder of the Racism, Capitalism, and the Law Lab and a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Merced. She is a prolific scholar, with several published books and dozens of academic articles and book chapters. She has received several awards, including the Distinguished Contribution to Research Book Award from the Latino/a Studies Section of the American Sociological Association for her book, Deported: Immigrant Policing, Disposable Labor and Global Capitalism – published by New York University Press in 2015. Her textbook, Race and Racisms: A Critical Approach, published by Oxford University Press, is now in its third edition and is the leading textbook in this field. Dr. Golash-Boza is currently working on a project funded by the National Science Foundation that explores how gentrification affects formerly incarcerated Black men in Washington, DC. That work is featured on her website: MappingGentrification.com. Professor Golash-Boza is also the creator of the blog, Get a Life, PhD, which focuses on faculty success and wellbeing and has over 4 million pageviews. For this and other mentoring work, she received the UC Merced Senate Award for Excellence in Faculty Mentorship in 2019.
Link to high-resolution headshot: https://www.dropbox.com/s/efu2cjk7i3arkl6/2021.headshot.jpg?dl=0