Yalidy Matos, Ph.D.
Yalidy Matos, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Latino and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Her research examines individual-level public opinion and political behavior within U.S. politics. Prof. Mato’s work has been published in academic journals such as Politics, Groups, and Identity Political Research Quarterly, and Latino Studies, among others. She is currently working on a book tentatively titled Moral and Immoral Whiteness in Immigration Politics, where she tackles the question of race in institutional politics. Prof. Matos and Prof. Morel’s research project, "Dominican Political Incorporation in the United States," has received the NSA Fellowship Award. Theirs is a pioneering comprehensive study of Dominican communities across the U.S. and the factors that allow or disallow them to be viewed as political groups with legitimate claims. For their study, Prof. Matos and Prof. Morel will create two pioneering open-source databases: the first national database of Dominican elected and appointed officials in the U.S., and the first national database of Dominican community and civic organizations in the U.S. They will rely on the Dominican Library and Archives to create these databases, particularly for organizations that are no longer active but are nevertheless key contributors to Dominicans’ political maturity and integration into U.S. society. Their research expands CUNY DSI’s tradition of documenting the incorporation of the Dominican people into mainstream U.S. society through the use of institutional data and quantitative analysis.
