PhD Candidate in the Program in Higher Education Leadership & Policy (PHELP) at The University of Texas at Austin with a dual graduate portfolio in Women & Gender Studies with a specialization in LGBTQ+ Studies and Mexican American & Latinx/a/o Studies
Gabriel Rodríguez Lemus, Jr. (he/él) is a 4th year PhD student in the Program in Higher Education Leadership & Policy (PHELP) at The University of Texas at Austin with a dual graduate portfolio in Women & Gender Studies with a specialization in LGBTQ+ Studies and Mexican American & Latinx/a/o Studies. He is the son of Gabriel Rodríguez López and Rosario Lemus Quezada, who immigrated to Fresno, California, from Nueva Italia, Michoacán, México. Born and raised in Fresno, California, he has also lived in San José, California; Tucson, Arizona; Indianapolis, Indiana; and currently resides in Austin, Texas. He earned his MSEd in Higher Education & Student Affairs from Indiana University Bloomington and his BA in Sociology, with a concentration in Community Change from San José State University. Currently, he is a Graduate Research Assistant (GRA) for Dr. Alison Kafer, College of Liberal Arts, GRA for Project LEAPS (Latinx Education After Public Schools), and the Graduate Conference Coordinator for the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, College of Liberal Arts.
Gabriel’s contributions, scholarship, and service have earned him state and national recognition by receiving the 2023 Tracy Davis Emerging Research Award, Coalition on Men & Masculinities from ACPA; the 2023 AAHHE Best Scholarly Paper by the Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE); selected as 2022 Graduate Fellow by the Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education (TACHE); a 2022 BIPOC Scholar by the Point Foundation; an 2021 & 2023 HSF Scholar by the Hispanic Scholarship Fund; and a 2021 Chancellor’s Doctoral Incentive Program Fellow by The California State University. He currently serves as Consulting Editor for the newly formed Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education and as an Editorial Board Member for Research in Brief for the Journal of College Student Development. Moreover, he was appointed to be the Social Media Coordinator & Webmaster for SIG 168 Graduate and Postdoctoral Education Across Disciplines for the American Educational Research Association (AERA). At UT Austin, he is the Founder and Co-Executive Director of the LatinX Graduate Student Association.
His academic research focuses on four main areas: (1) Men & Masculinities of Color, specifically Queer & Trans Latinx/o Masculinities & Disabilities, (2) Latinx/a/o People in Higher Education, (3) Critical Disability Studies in Higher Education, and (4) Qualitative Research Methods, specifically Arts-Based & Visual Methodologies. As an interdisciplinary educational scholar, his work lives at the intersections of Higher Education, Jotería Studies, Chicanx & Latinx Studies, and Critical Disability Studies. His dissertation work engages, complicates, & interrogates the ways Latinx/o masculinities are understood, specifically for queer & trans Latinx/o collegians living with disabilities. He will be conducting an arts-based participatory action research study for his dissertation. He will be organizing an arts-based collective that elicits art, poems, and photography at a Hispanic-Serving Institution. As a photographer and poet, he believes in the power of using art in higher education research, specifically bringing the various forms of knowledge production of queer & trans Latinx/a/o people into the academy. Ultimately, as a queer jotx first-generation Latinx doctoral student who lives with a disability, his work is deeply tied to his positionality.