Dr. Barrios’s research and teaching are deeply shaped by her identity as an immigrant and teacher in urban public schools. Born to Filipino parents in Singapore, Dr. Barrios grew up in Southeast Asia (Sabah, Malaysia & Manila, Philippines) and then immigrated to Los Angeles as a teenager. As a Pinay immigrant undergrad in the Bay Area, she studied the experiences of immigrants and BIPOC folx in the US, and complemented this literary education with involvement with a vibrant Asian-American student activism community that was integrated into an active Asian-American studies program in her campus. She considers this “alternative curriculum” — rallying for Ethic Studies, producing epic cultural nights, editing literary magazines, volunteering at Filipino bilingual ed programs in San Francisco etc., as formative to her continuing interest in advocacy for minoritized students and communities of all backgrounds. This pushed her to pursue an MA in education and a teaching credential, which jump-started her career as a public school teacher in South LA, where she continued to advocate for immigrant communities, first-gen students, and BIPOC cultural and political visibility. As a whole, these experiences drive her current engagement for and with APIDA-identified spaces and communities at the UA, serving also as one of two Asian Pacific American Student Affairs Faculty-in-Residence and an affiliate faculty for the Center of East Asian Studies.
Jacqueline Barrios studies the global 19th century, literature, and the city, which she extends in interdisciplinary, socially engaged projects within the public humanities. Her current scholarship investigates London-Pacific trans-urban imaginaries—geographies of East Asian Pacific Rim entanglement with the British capital. As a member and former teaching fellow of UCLA’s Urban Humanities Initiative, a research program linking architecture, urban planning, and humanities scholars, she co-leads DIGITAL SALON, using podcasts to explore emergent research and artistic practices for remaking and reimagining the city. Her interdisciplinary interests are expressed by embedding her scholarship within communities as founder of LitLabs, a public humanities project hub fusing visual performing arts and site-specific research with the study of literary texts, in order to document, animate and uplift the life-worlds of communities who interpret them. She is the author of the forthcoming book Dear Charles Dickens, Love South LA (University of Iowa Press).
Dr. Barrios holds a PhD in English from the University of California Los Angeles, a Master of English from the University of California at Irvine, a Master of Education and a BA in English from the University of California at Berkeley. A veteran educator at LAUSD, she served as a public school teacher for many years in South Los Angeles.