Zabdi R. Velásquez Zavalza

I am a Ph.D. student in Political Science at UCLA, where I study how unequal access to public goods and environmental services shapes political participation, perceptions of government, and lived experiences of marginalization.

My research sits at the intersection of Comparative Politics, Race, Ethnicity, and Politics, and Environmental Politics and Governance, with a regional focus on the Southwestern U.S. and Latin America. I use mixed methods, including survey analysis, qualitative fieldwork, and spatial data, to examine how infrastructure, waste governance, and resource extraction affect communities that are historically underrepresented in political decision-making.

At UCLA, I am a recipient of the Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellowship and have been supported by the Division of Graduate Education. I also serve as a Teaching Assistant in the Department of Political Science and as a Graduate Student Researcher at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

Prior to UCLA, I earned a B.A. in Political Science & International Affairs from UC Riverside, where I worked in the Dionne Publicly Engaged Research Lab and published research on undergraduate political science research in PS: Political Science & Politics.