Lisa García Bedolla is Berkeley's Vice Provost for Graduate Studies and Hitchock Dean of the Graduate Division, and Chancellor's Professor of Education. She uses the tools of social science to reveal the causes of educational and political inequalities in the United States, considering differences across the lines of ethnorace, gender, class, geography, et cetera. She believes an intersectional and interdisciplinary approach is critical to recognizing the complexity of the contemporary United States. She has used a variety of social science methods – in-depth interviewing, survey research, field experiments, and geographic information systems (GIS), among others – to shed light on these questions.

She has published six books and dozens of research articles, earning five national book awards and numerous other awards. She has consulted for presidential campaigns and statewide ballot efforts and has partnered with over a dozen community organizations working to empower low-income communities of color. Through those partnerships, she has developed a set of best practices for engaging and mobilizing voters in these communities, becoming one of the nation’s foremost experts on political engagement within communities of color.

Professor García Bedolla earned her PhD in political science from Yale University and her BA in Latin American Studies and Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley.

Due to her appointment as Vice Provost for Graduate Studies and Dean of the Graduate Division effective July 1, 2019, Professor García Bedolla is not accepting any new graduate students at this time.

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