Janett Barragán Miranda is an Assistant Professor of Latina/Latino Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is currently working on her book manuscript tentatively titled, Hungering for Equality: Mexican and Mexican Americans from Post WWII To Civil Rights, a monograph about the community of Mexican origin and their struggle for food justice in the 1960s. Focusing on federal food assistance programs including the Food Stamps Program; Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); and the National School Lunch Program the study finds that food assistance often functioned to racialize poor people throughout the U.S. Southwest. Through her research Barragán Miranda has utilized archival repositories as well as oral history interviews and has a forthcoming methodologies paper in the Latino Studies Journal.

Barragán Miranda completed an M.A. and Ph.D. in Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She was a visiting fellow in the History of Science Department and Harvard University and a Postdoctoral Fellow for Academic Diversity at American University. Through her experiences Barragán Miranda has been able to engage with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts. She was a mentor in the Latinx Mentorship Program at American University where she worked with undergraduates pursuing their degrees and she was also a mentor at Write Girl, a non-profit organization dedicated to encouraging young women to pursue careers in writing. As a first-generation college student and the daughter of Mexican immigrants, Barragán Miranda understands first-hand the importance of mentorship and community building and she is committed to contribute to these efforts in the Latina/Latino Studies Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.