Pathways to Social Change and Justice

Dr. Fernando Tormos-Aponte joined the School of Public Policy faculty in August 2020 after a year with Public Policy and Political Science as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. His research focuses on social movements, identity politics, social policy, and transnational politics.

Black and white mural of statue of liberty blowing winds entwined with the American flag.
Mural “Colonialism Is a Hurricane” (2018), by Puerto Rican feminist artist collective Colectivo Moriviví with the community in El Museo del Barrio, East Harlem, NY.

Most recently, Dr. Tormos-Aponte has been managing research projects in the following areas, tied by the common thread of understanding the pathways by which marginalized groups bring about social change and justice:

  • Natural Disasters: seeks to understand the extent to which governments neglect marginalized and vulnerable groups, how these groups can resist government neglect and confront the current climate crisis, and how governments can enact more equitable disaster resource allocation policies.
  • Social Movements: examines how social groups cope with their differences and engage in efforts to bring about social change. This includes work on anti-racist organizing, gender justice organizing, movements against sweatshops, movements against colonialism and racial capitalism, as well as movements that engage in intersectional forms of organizing, which he refers to as intersectional solidarity.
  • Diversity in Higher Education: calls for organizing and agency-oriented efforts to diversify the social sciences and STEM fields. His work in this area includes both research on best practices for strengthening the pathway for graduate studies of groups historically excluded from higher education as well as programming that works directly with students to support their transition from undergraduate to graduate studies.

Check out some of Dr. Tormos-Aponte’s recent publications, and keep an eye on our Twitter feed for his frequent media appearances:

Intersectional Synthesis: A Case Study of the Colectiva Feminista en Construcción

An Organizing Approach to Diversifying Political Science

Why it’s so misleading to call the Capitol violence ‘Third World’(The New York Times)

Scientists Are Becoming More Politically Engaged – Here’s what that means beyond the 2020 elections (Scientific American)