Jimena Perez is a community-engaged scholar, NSF GRFP Fellow, and Geography Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley. Her dissertation explores the L.A. River—known to the Tongva as paayme paxaayt—as a site of memory, resistance, and repair. Raised in Southeast Los Angeles, she witnessed the River’s confinement in concrete, mirroring the struggles of nearby working-class communities. Rather than centering loss, her ethnographic research highlights the visions and practices of residents across L.A. County who challenge dominant planning narratives and reimagine infrastructure. Jimena’s work interrogates who development is for and what livable worlds communities are already creating. Rooted in both scholarly inquiry and lived experience, her project listens to those whose diasporic attachments and everyday labor envision possibilities beyond displacement and abandonment, reclaiming space for individual and collective repair.
Department and Institution:
Geography, UC Berkeley
Bio/CV:
