I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. My father and mother immigrated to the U.S. in the 1970s without any other extended family members. My father is from Perú, and mother is from England. I earned my B.A. at the University of California, San Diego with a major in Political Science and my Ph.D from Cornell in the Government Department. I lived in Washington, DC for 15 months between 2006 and 2007 to conduct interviews on Capitol Hill and archival research at the Library of Congress. I live with my husband, Geoff Wallace, and our two middle-school aged children in Seattle.  In my free time, I enjoy spending time with my family, listening to music, cooking, hiking, traveling, and exploring the PNW. 

Formal Bio:  Sophia Jordán Wallace is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington in Seattle. She is the Director of the Washington Institute for the Study of Inequality and Race (WISIR). Her research interests include the politics of race and ethnicity, Latino politics, immigration politics and policy, representation, and the immigrant rights protests of 2006. Her work has been published in various journals including the American Journal of Political Science, Political Research Quarterly, International Migration Review, Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics, Urban Affairs Review, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Politics, Groups, and Identities, Political Science Quarterly, American Politics Research, and Social Science Quarterly. She is currently working on two books. One is entitled, United We Stand: Latino Representation in Congress. The other is a co-authored book entitled, Walls, Cages, and Family Separation: Immigration Politics in the Trump Era. Her work has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Dirksen Center, and the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress.