I am an assistant professor of government at Claremont McKenna College (cdvargas at cmc dot edu)

My research sits at the intersection of political science, public health and sociology. 

My dissertation focuses on American Politics and aims to answer three interrelated questions: 

1) Under what conditions is the public willing to grant undocumented immigrants with access to welfare programs?

2) To what extent can self-interest and normative appeals increase support for providing undocumented immigrants with healthcare access? 

3) How do minorities and other marginalized groups navigate living excluded from government welfare programs?

I obtained my Ph.D. from Stanford University, a B.A. in Political Science from Pitzer College and received a Fulbright Research grant in 2014-2015 to investigate healthcare inequities in Spain. I also served as a Graduate Fellow in Stanford's Center for American Democracy (SCAD), Stanford's Center for Population Health Sciences (PHS), and a Postdoc Fellow at Stanford's Immigration Policy Lab (IPL)

My research has been generously funded by the National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine (Ford Dissertation Fellowship), National Institutes of Health (NIH) Spectrum Grant, NIH Diversity Supplement Postdoctoral Award, Stanford Center for American Democracy (SCAD), Stanford Institute for Research in the Social Sciences (IRiSS).