Amalia Pallares is Professor of Political Science and Latin American and Latino Studies and Director of the Latin American and Latino Studies Program. She has a PhD in Political Science from the University of Texas. She studies social movements, ethnicity and race in Latin America and in the U.S, focusing on the relationship between political activism and identity formation among newly politicized groups. Her first book From Peasant Struggles to Indian Resistance: the Ecuadorian Andes in the late Twentieth Century analyzed the social, economic and political conditions that inform contemporary indigenous activism and identity in Ecuador. Other areas of study in Latin America include rural politics, political protest, and political change. More recently, she has focused on immigrant activism in Chicago.

Along with with Nilda Flores-Gonzalez she co-edited Marcha: Latino Chicago and the National Immigrant Movement (University of Illinois Press, 2010) which explored the role played by institutions, collective organizing experiences, political coalitions and public policies in shaping immigrant activism and subjectivities. Her recent book Family Activism: Immigrant Struggles and the Politics of Noncitizenship focuses on the different ways in which family and the family separation issue is politicized in immigrant rights struggles. Prof. Pallares teaches courses on Latin American Politics, comparative Politics, Latino Politics, identity politics, social movements, race, ethnicity and politics in the Americas, and state theory.