¡Hola!
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My name is Andrea Roman-Alfaro. My pronouns are she/ella. I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the University of New Mexico (January 2025). I have a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Toronto.
I was born and raised in the coastal province of Callao. My family roots are in the Peruvian northern Andes, northern Lima, and the south of Spain. I currently reside in Tkaronto [Toronto], the treaty lands and territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation and the traditional territory of the Huron-Wendat and the Haudenosaunee peoples. My research agenda looks at how social structures shape people's interpretations, experiences, and responses to violence. I study violence by examining, what I called, its horizontal (how violence moves across private and public spaces) and vertical (how violence moves across individual, community, and societal scales) dimensions. In particular, I focus on marginalized women’s experiences of violence. Since violence affects the structure of families and social relations, and women are at the centre of these relations, their understandings and responses to violence highlight how violence occurs and reproduces. |
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My research is guided by three main questions:
1) How do we make sense of violence? 2) How do we respond, resist, and heal from violence?3) How do class, race, and gender affect our definitions, experiences, and responses to violence? Together, these questions contribute to understanding the social dynamics and political processes that make violence possible. My work has been supported by the Vanier Candada Graduate scholarship, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, the Connaught Public Impact Fellowship, the Mary H. Beatty Fellowship, the School of Cities Graduate Fellowship at the University of Toronto, Sociologists for Women in Society, and the American Sociological Association. |
My research is international and comparative. My work has been published in Gender & Society, Social Justice, Curriculum Inquiry, and the International Journal of Education for Social Justice.
My dissertation, “Interconnected Violence: The Dynamics of Life and Death at the Urban Margins,” examined the dynamics of violence at the urban margins by linking citizens’ experiences of violence in the home and on the street to the political decisions that shape violence governance. By treating violence as a social process that transcends the public and private divide, I analyzed how people make sense of and survive everyday forms of violence, including organized crime, police extortion, criminalization, and domestic violence. In particular, I explored how women from a shantytown in Callao, the second-deadliest district of Peru, interpreted and responded to violence in daily life and how state actors’ reactions to violence affected marginalized communities. Using a wide-variety of qualitative methods, I connected citizens’ experiences of violence to the political decisions that shape violence governance at the urban margins.
My dissertation, “Interconnected Violence: The Dynamics of Life and Death at the Urban Margins,” examined the dynamics of violence at the urban margins by linking citizens’ experiences of violence in the home and on the street to the political decisions that shape violence governance. By treating violence as a social process that transcends the public and private divide, I analyzed how people make sense of and survive everyday forms of violence, including organized crime, police extortion, criminalization, and domestic violence. In particular, I explored how women from a shantytown in Callao, the second-deadliest district of Peru, interpreted and responded to violence in daily life and how state actors’ reactions to violence affected marginalized communities. Using a wide-variety of qualitative methods, I connected citizens’ experiences of violence to the political decisions that shape violence governance at the urban margins.
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I am a scholar and activist who combines research with community work and advocacy. I firmly believe in the transformative power of engaged scholarship. Thus, I spend a lot of my time working with community, collectively responding to social justice issue, and creating alternatives for a more just future. Check out my research and public engagement page to see what I have done and what I am up to. |
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