Before joining the Center, Salazar-Porzio received her Ph.D. in American Studies and Ethnicity from the University of Southern California in 2010, and held a Smithsonian Institution Latina/o Studies Postdoctoral Fellowship with the National Museum of American History, in addition to research fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and National Science Foundations, the American Association of University Women, and was a 2011 finalist for the Princeton Society of Fellows post-doctoral fellowship. Salazar-Porzio also served as a primary education teacher in Los Angeles, where she received a Teacher of the Year award in Eagle Rock, California in 2004.

Salazar-Porzio’s research has combined scholarship on diversity in higher education, racialization, gender and ethnic identity, and intergroup relations.  She has an inter-disciplinary background in qualitative methodologies including archival and empirical research, critical analysis of discourse and data, and the use of interviews, oral histories, and participant observation.   She combines these skills and experiences with profound interests in social justice and education in the service of her work at the Center for Institutional and Social Change.  With the Center, Salazar-Porzio’s research explores the nexus of diversity/inclusion and publicly engaged scholarship through the lens of higher education. Currently, she is the project manager for a research project with Syracuse University and Imagining America examining “Publicly Engaged Scholarship’s Role in Access and Inclusion.” In addition to her role at the Center, Salazar-Porzio is currently working on numerous publications including a book manuscript entitled, The Edges of Empire: Mediterranean Myths, Tropical Fantasies, and Representation as Conquest, a reexamination of conquest that interrogates the political dimensions of representations in tourist economies while maintaining a focus on critical race theory and the experiences of communities of color in the United States.