About
Andrea Barajas (she/her) is a second-year doctoral student in Sociology and Public Policy.
A Rackham Merit Fellow, her research examines the relationship between community, place, and inequality. She is particularly interested in how access to neighborhood resources and community institutions shapes residents’ experiences of their neighborhoods, including perceptions of safety and patterns of justice system involvement. Central to this work is understanding how neighborhood context influences the implementation and effectiveness of community-based interventions, with particular attention to how community involvement and collective efficacy shape program outcomes and longer-term impacts.
One line of research within this broader agenda focuses on youth justice. Within this area, her work examines restorative justice and how restorative approaches are defined, institutionalized, and translated into practice. Drawing on her experience as both a researcher and practitioner, she examines how different actors determine what constitutes restorative justice, how these understandings shape programs operating under the restorative label, and what these distinctions mean for the young people who experience them.
Andrea earned her BA and MS in Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. As a proud first-generation college student committed to demystifying the hidden curriculum of academia, she encourages prospective graduate students to reach out with questions at abrjs@umich.edu.
