On a regular basis, I devour an entire bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos for dinner. And some of my favorite films of all time include Shrek 1, Shrek 2, Shrek 3 and Shrek 4.
I, also, study political science for a living.
Broadly stated, I study American politics and quantitative methods. In my research agenda, I ask the following questions:
(i) to what extent do racial minorities achieve electoral inclusion in Anglo-American systems, and
(ii) how does identity alter political attachments within and outside Anglo-American spaces?
On the side, I love creating things.
I compile top-10 lists about anything from pop culture to best foods, I ink free verses & poems in French, and I recently launched a YouTube channel called ATOM Laboratories.
What about food?! English, Filipino, French, Japanese, Mexican, Polish, Soul, Togolese, unhealthy, I literally eat everything and anything. Just no celery or raisins please. Pasties, lumpias, ratatouille, sushi, enchiladas, pierogi, collard greens, fufu? Yes, please!
Lastly, as a child of immigrant parents, product of the foster care system, and FLI (first-generation/low-income) student, I welcome opportunities to discuss applying to programs in political science and other related fields.
I especially encourage prospective FLI students, LGBTQI+ peoples, and racially diverse folks to please reach out via email with "Prospective Student" as the subject line!
Email: raymundo.g.lopez@gmail.com
Phone: (619) 709-8092
Detention Resistance/Freedom For Immigrants
Human Rights First
International Rescue Committee
Voices
Cross and Crown Elementary
With the guidance of Dr. Alberto Diaz-Cayeros, and peer advisor Luis Rodriguez, this thesis leveraged text analysis of hurricane survivors’ testimonials (chapter 1), applied experimental methods of ethnic priming to questions of identity (chapter 2), and centered Ecofeminism and the Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana to examine gender disparities and grassroots mobilization in Puerto Rico (chapter 3).
Led by Dr. Bernard L. Fraga, Dr. Eric G. Juenke and Dr. Paru Shah, this project is a culmination of 14,500 unique major-party and minor-party candidates compiled into one dataset. Check out their other works as well as those of the contributors.
For my undergraduate capstone, I was advised by Dr. David McCuan. The paper centers frameworks of state power, constitutional law, and racial perceptions as they relate to electoral representation in US ‘unincorporated’ territories.
In 2019, I worked under Dr. Eric Juenke (at Michigan State) to conduct a study on the effects of racial priming. I utilized visual (phenotypes) and textual (names) cues to assess how voter biases affected the electability of Latino candidates in state legislative elections. I tabulated a series of advanced regression models from a survey pool of 800 participants.
Under the direction of Dr. Cynthia Boaz, I authored a resolution paper on (i) data harnessing for sustainable development (ii) the role of the private sector in promoting sustainable development and (iii) gender mainstreaming in early recovery situations for France’s United Nations Development Program.