Elizabeth Ackert

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara. My research interests include racial/ethnic inequality, immigration, education, health disparities, urban geography, and population and environment. My individual and collaborative work examines explanations for why racial/ethnic and immigrant-origin groups are unequally distributed across contexts– including schools, neighborhoods, and immigrant destinations– and evaluates the consequences of this contextual inequality for disparities in outcomes in domains such as education, residential mobility, and health. I am particularly interested in understanding how the attributes of immigrant-receiving contexts, including states, communities, neighborhoods, and schools, influence the educational and health outcomes of children and adolescents of Mexican origin. I also have a line of research investigating kin networks and residential mobility and neighborhood choice. In newer work, I am exploring the intersections of socio-demographic vulnerability and exposure to heat in California.