Raymundo Lopez is a PhD candidate in the department of political science at Michigan State University. His research leverages video-as-data from U.S. Congressional floor speeches to evaluate how members of Congress negotiate and perform their social identities in real time—when they invoke them, how they describe them, and in what combinations. The Fund for Latino Scholarship will support efforts to launch an online survey experiment in a dedicated chapter of his dissertation. Ray is committed to public scholarship and digital storytelling. He is the founder of Atom Laboratories, a YouTube channel that translates political science research into accessible video essays, candidate profiles, and analyses of contemporary political issues. His work bridges scholarship and practice, with the goal of broadening civic understanding and fostering inclusive political discourse. Lopez is a Stanford University, USC POIR Predoctoral Summer Institute and Ronald McNair alum.
