Race, Identity, Society, and Equity Lab

2025-2026 RISE Research Team

The RISE Lab is a research group housed in the Educational Psychology program in the Department of Individual, Family, and Community Education at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Ursula Moffitt leads the lab, collaborating with graduate and undergraduate students on developmental and educational psychology research related to racial and gender identity, critical consciousness, and equity in education.  

Drawing on qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods approaches, RISE Lab members take a critical lens to each project, maintaining a commitment to social justice each step of the way. In doing so, we strive to shed light on macro-level systems of power and oppression, while examining how they are both upheld and resisted at the micro-level of individuals and interpersonal interactions. With research focusing on parents, teachers, students, and academia itself, a through line across this diverse portfolio is a person-in-context approach, focusing on the reciprocal relationships between individual people and their sociocultural environments.