Julio Cedillo ('23-'24 Cohort) has been awarded a Latinx Research Center (LRC) Faculty-Mentored Undergraduate Research Fellowship (FMURF) for the '24-'25 Academic Year! Julio will be part of the LRC Fellowship's fourth cohort alongside Associate Professor of Sociology, Armando Lara-Millán.
The LRC’s FMURF program pairs leading scholars with outstanding undergraduates to advance research in Latinx Studies across the liberal arts, sciences, professional schools, and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Throughout the entirety of the academic year, Student Fellows work closely with Faculty to support one or more original research projects to develop research skills, critical thinking, and intellectual creativity. The fellowship awards up to $9,600 to the student fellow over the 2024-2025 academic year, given good standing in the program.
Throughout the program, faculty mentors will be expected to meet with student fellows on a biweekly basis at a minimum, and student fellows will be expected to assist their faculty mentor on one or more research projects to develop research skills, critical thinking, and int
ellectual creativity. At the end of the Spring 2025 semester, faculty-student teams will publicly present their research at the LRC and must submit a 5-page paper or capstone project by Summer 2025.
Professor Lara-Millán is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology. He earned his PhD in Sociology from Northwestern University and was a former Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar. He studies political economy in sociology, how markets change and their enabling institutions but where history, culture, knowledge, and power are centered. He is currently the chair-elect of the Sociology of Law Section of the American Sociological Association, a faculty affiliated with the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative, and currently a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.
Julio enrolled in Lara-Millán's Economy and Society course in Spring 2024, where Julio began his interest in economic sociology. During this course, Julio learned about financialization and its origins tracing back to the 1970s. He credits this course as a main inspiration for pursuing a political economy minor where he plans to use his minor as foundational knowledge to lead him to the economic sociology field in graduate school.
"Being a first-gen student, money can be scary. This feeling was especially heightened during the 24-25 FAFSA period where I kept running into barriers. Money became the last thing I wanted to to talk about–especially in class. Taking [Sociology] 120, I felt like it redefined my realtionship with the financial sector and made me realize there is a whole other field in sociology that I wasn't made aware of. The economy didn't have to be a feared sector but one where it can be critiqued and explained for the way it is today."
Congratulations Julio!