Lorraine Torres

Reducing Inequality Network (RIN) Scholar

Lorraine Torres Colón is a decolonial feminist scholar completing her Ph.D. in the Sociology program at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She is interested in social network formation, spatial analysis, gendered violence, and health outcomes among colonial migrants. Her past research and thesis, “Mental Illness Among Latinx Migrants: Literature Review and Proposed Avenues of Research,” focused on mental health trends among Latinx migrants in the United States. Outside of academia, Torres Colón spent five years working for immigrants’ rights organizations, eventually coordinating the Trans Immigrant Defense Effort at the Transgender Law Center. Currently her research uses social network analysis and spatial analysis to study disparities in intimate partner violence and mental health among Puerto Ricans. She also works on two projects using the Luxembourg Income Study Database to study gendered economic disparities among colonial migrants in the United States. In addition, she is a Pipeline Mentor Fellow, through which she mentors selected CUNY undergraduate students from underrepresented groups who are interested in pursuing graduate level education. She is an adjunct at Hunter College, where she teaches courses on the sociology of race and ethnicity, the sociology of mental health, and the sociology of aging.

Areas of Expertise

Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches to the Study of Racial Health Disparities