Raquel Aldana

Raquel E. Aldana joined UC Davis in 2017 to serve as the inaugural Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Diversity with a law faculty appointment. She returned to full time law teaching in 2020.

Aldana is a graduate of Arizona State University (earning a bachelor’s degree in English and another in Spanish) and Harvard Law School. She was a professor at the William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, before joining the McGeorge School of Law faculty in 2009. From 2006 to 2007, Aldana was a Fulbright Scholar in Guatemala.

Aldana has led multiple research projects and programs around gender violence, transitional justice, criminal justice, sustainable development, immigrant justice, and immigrant trauma. She has authored or edited five books and published over thirty law review articles or book chapters on transitional justice, criminal justice, sustainable development, inter-cultural legal sensibility, and immigration. She is the recipient of several research grants, including serving as Principal Investigator of Building Bridges: Narrowing the Legal-Scientific Divide in Immigration Forensic Assessments, UC Davis Academic Senate Interdisciplinary Grants 2019-2020. For more information about this collaboration, please visit the website, Compassion in Immigration.

Aldana’s research has focused on transitional justice, criminal justice reforms and sustainable development in Latin America, as well as immigrant rights.