Welcome Dr. Magaly Ordoñez, CJS’s New Faculty
The Department of Criminology and Justice Studies is pleased to welcome Dr. Magaly Ordoñez to our department.
Dr. Magaly Ordoñez is an incoming Assistant Professor who completed their PhD and M.A. in Feminist Studies at the University of Minnesota and B.A. in Chicana/o Studies and Sociology at CSU Dominguez Hills. Their research examines historical and contemporary cannabis cultures in California to understand how marginalized communities including disabled, LGBTQ+, and Latinx folks navigate criminalization and the cannabis industry. Joining Chicanx/Latinx studies, queer and trans feminist geographies, disability studies, and critical criminology, they argue that marginalized communities across California foster landscapes of political, social, and cultural resistance within and beyond the limits of cannabis legality. Through qualitative methodologies including archival, ethnographic, and spatial humanities tools (ArcGIS Online/Storymaps), their emphasis on gendered and racialized cannabis structures, specifically social equity programs, reveal how cannabis policies can be contradicting in their goals even in states trying to repair the harm caused by the criminalization of cannabis. As such, they prioritize interdisciplinary feminist and ethnic studies approaches to understanding cannabis criminalization, broader substance use through harm reduction approaches, and political histories of resistance by disabled and queer communities.
Additionally, in the past ten years, Dr. Ordoñez has engaged in community-based participatory research with students in alternative education spaces for pushed-out youth, with Latinx parents learning educational advocacy, collaborative portfolios for long-term historical school preservation, and with museums to develop curriculum focused on LGBTQ+ activism. Dr. Ordoñez is dedicated to promoting interdisciplinary perspectives, intercultural understanding, and concern with social responsibility related to cannabis knowledge and education. Dr. Ordoñez is originally from Los Angeles, California and was raised in the immigrant neighborhoods of Westlake/MacArthur Park, Pico-Union, and Koreatown.
Join us in welcoming Dr. Magaly Ordoñez in joining the Matador community at CSUN!