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Sophia Castillo

Ph.D. Student and Instructor
University of California, Irvine / California State University, Dominguez Hills

Sophia Castillo is a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Irvine, and an instructor at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Their research focuses on the role of perception in the social production of law and its enforcement, with particular attention to how institutional data collection practices shape understandings of identity and policing.

Their current work analyzes California administrative police records made available through the Racial and Identity Profiling Act (RIPA), a dataset that documents officers’ perceptions of individuals they interact with, including perceived race, gender, disability, and queer identity, as well as the reason for the stop and actions taken during the encounter. Sophia’s research examines disparities in these records over time, highlighting significant shifts that raise questions about how data collection forms, procedures, and categories may influence the very perceptions they are intended to capture.