Date/Time
Date(s) - Apr 02, 2026
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Categories
Melanie Plasencia
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Rutgers University
Title: Aging in Urban Precarity: Community-Engaged Research with Older Latinx Immigrants
Bio: Melanie Z. Plasencia, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University–Newark. She earned her doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley, and completed a multi-year César Chávez Postdoctoral Fellowship at Dartmouth College. Her research examines how older immigrants navigate aging amid poverty, declining health, limited access to social safety nets, and the intersecting forces of race, ethnicity, gender, and class.
She is currently working on her first book manuscript, Aging on the Hudson, an ethnographic study of older Latino immigrants aging in an urban community across from Manhattan. She also leads a community-engaged research project in Paterson, New Jersey, through the Rutgers Hub for Aging Collaboration, partnering with grassroots organizations to better understand and address the everyday needs of older adults.
Her scholarship has appeared in Social Problems, The Gerontologist, Generations, and Inside Higher Ed. She is also a Ford Foundation Fellow and currently serves as Membership Chair for the Section on Aging and the Life Course of the American Sociological Association. A committed educator and mentor, she teaches courses on aging, migration, race, and inequality, and works to equip students with the tools to critically engage with the social issues shaping their communities.
Virtual: https://syracuseuniversity.zoom.us/j/95583899584