Francisco-Menchavez named first CHSS assistant dean for restorative and transformative racial justice
Valerie Francisco-Menchavez, associate professor in the Department of Sociology & Sexuality Studies at San Francisco State University, has been appointed to the newly created post of assistant dean for restorative and transformative racial justice in the College of Health & Social Sciences (CHSS). The position was created as part of the CHSS Reflections and Actions to Create Equity (RACE) Initiative and reports directly to the dean and RACE Collective (the leadership of the RACE Initiative). She will begin in the role starting Spring 2023 when she returns from a sabbatical.
Francisco-Menchavez is committed to transnational organizing and scholarly examination of Filipina migrants’ lives. Her political and academic work has focused on Filipinas working as domestic workers in New York City and as caregivers in the San Francisco/Bay Area. She has written about care work engendering radical solidarities among those who are racialized migrants, low-wage workers and transnational mothers. Her book, titled The Labor of Care: Filipina Migrants and Transnational Families in the Digital Age, explores the dynamics of gender and technology of care work in Filipino transnational families in the Philippines and the U.S. Francisco-Menchavez has collaborated with organizations, students and community members to craft participatory and feminist methodologies and projects where migrants’ experiences are centered as expertise. To this end, she has understood the importance of advancing political struggle and movement building as essential to the process of knowledge production.
It has been the commitment and collective guidance of renegade scholars, radical activists and caring communities that helped Francisco-Menchavez sharpen her critical analysis of power and collaboratively build organizations and space for justice. Through her scholar-activist work, academic and political, on campus and off, Francisco-Menchavez realized that the power of change is in the power collective organization and creativity.
“Today, our world calls for urgent attention towards undoing oppression, restoring dignity and justice, and envisioning a new type of relations with one another,” Francisco-Menchavez said. “It calls us to take great care towards cultivating forms of racial justice, that is intertwined with intersectional analysis of power and oppression. To this end, I am thrilled to step into the role of assistant dean for restorative and transformative racial justice.”
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