Bio as of September 2005

Christine Marie Sierra is associate professor of political science at the University of New Mexico. She received a B.A. with honors from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University. She previously taught at Colorado College and held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Brookings Institution. She has been a visiting professor at the University of Arizona and at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

She teaches and researches in American politics with a focus on race, ethnicity, and gender. She publishes on Latino political participation, immigration politics, and Hispanic politics in New Mexico. She has been at the forefront in the study of Latina women in the United States. Publications include Chicana Voices: Intersections of Class, Race,and Gender (University of New Mexico Press, third printing, 1993) and articles in the National Political Science Review and Intercambios Femeniles (Stanford University). She also wrote and produced a highly acclaimed documentary, This Town Is Not For Sale! (1999) on the election of a Chicana activist as the first woman mayor of Santa Fe. She is currently directing a major study of African American, Latino/a, and Asian American elected officials, with a special focus on women of color. Collaborators on the three-year project include Carol Hardy-Fanta (University of Massachusetts-Boston), Pei-te Lien (University of Utah), and Dianne Pinderhughes (University of Illinois-Urbana).

She was a consultant in the establishment of a Latino Studies program at Williams College and the University of Notre Dame. From 1994 to 1997, she served as a presidential appointee to the Good Neighbor Environmental Board to address environmental and infrastructure needs of the U.S.-Mexico border region.

Service in the profession includes membership on the APSA Executive Council (2000-2002) and the Editorial Board of PS (1999--2001). A founding member of the APSA Organized Section on Race, Ethnicity, and Politics, she served as co-president (1999--2000) and on the book awards committee (1999). Additional service in APSA includes the Committee on the Status of Latinas/os in the Profession (1996--1998), the Women's Caucus for Political Science, and the Ralph Bunche Award for Best Book on Cultural Pluralism (1996).

She has numerous appearances on radio and television as an expert in American and Latino/a politics and has lectured extensively on college campuses across the country. In 2000 and 2002, she served as election night analyst and commentator for the NBC affiliate in Albuquerque.