The Department of Ethnic Studies UC Berkeley

Bio & Research Interests

Sonia’s research finds that mainstream psychiatric modes of diagnosing people who are identified as Latinx carry racialized, gendered, and sexualized notions of psychopathology among people of color. In particular, this work looks at “cultural concepts of distress” (CCDs), such as Ataque de Nervios, and documents gendered anti-Black and anti-Indigenous stereotypes carried within the literature on CCDs and related topics. She formulates a cross-disciplinary archive of race, gender, science, and psychopathology to reveal how concepts of brujería (Spanish for ‘magic’, or often, ‘witchcraft’) and other examples of non-Western knowledge become pathologized in the existing research and training literature. 

Sonia is a Hellman Foundation fellow for her work on race and gender in biomedical systems of psychopathology. Along her path toward Ethnic Studies, Sonia published research in social, organizational, and clinical psychology and studied counseling psychology at the doctoral level. She completed her Bachelor of Science at Northwestern University, not terribly far from her hometown of Cicero, Illinois. 

Advisor:

Ramon Grosfoguel

Courses Taught or Assisted

Taught:

Reading and Composition in Native American Studies 

Reading and Composition in Asian American Studies 

Reading and Composition in Chicano/a Studies

Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methods in Psychology

Assisted:

Intro to Chicano/a History

Intro to Theories of Ethnic Studies

International Immigration in Western Europe and US before and after 9/11

Asian American Community Health 

Indigenous Peoples in Global Inequality

Islamophobia and Constructing Otherness

Muslims in America