Nicole Trujillo-Pagan
Position Title
Associate Professor, Sociology
Biography
A native New Yorker, also considered a “Nuyorican,” Dr. Nicole Trujillo-Pagán focuses on how policies and practices shape social and spatial mobility.
In her current book project, "Out of Place," she uses interviews with youth living in Southwest Detroit to develop our understanding of borderlands. She pays attention to the ways local phenomena are shaped in relation to global ones and argues space is a field of struggle. She experiences Detroit in ways that remind her of growing up between Williamsburg and the Lower East Side of New York as both shifted from immigrant neighborhoods to gentrified ones. She is as committed to border crossing in her work as she is in her own life.
At Wayne State University, she views border crossing as a collective struggle and pushes her colleagues to consider the borders that shape the lives of students and faculty.