Jimena N. Perez Arevalo

Jimena Perez is a Geography PhD Student at the University of California, Berkeley. She holds a Bachelor’s in Geography from Dartmouth College. She is also a UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Fellow and an NSF GRFP Fellow. Her dissertation explores the L.A. River—known to the Tongva as paayme paxaayt—as a site of memory, resistance, and repair. Rather than centering loss, her ethnographic research highlights the visions and practices of residents across L.A. County who challenge dominant planning narratives and reimagine infrastructure. Rooted in scholarly inquiry and lived experience, her project listens to those whose diasporic attachments and everyday labor envision possibilities beyond displacement and abandonment, reclaiming space for individual and collective repair.