Adolfho Romero

Research Impact & Achievements

Transparent counts with conservative rounding. Updated 2026.

$1.5M+

Research grants contributed to

Contributions across 8 awards including NEH, National Park Service, and Doris Duke Foundation projects.
200+

Oral history interviews conducted

Community based interviews across Florida, the Mississippi Delta, and Indigenous communities nationwide.
175+

Students taught at Cornell

Three sections across two semesters, with another graduate TA appointment upcoming.
40+

Student volunteers coordinated

Over three years as Assistant Director at the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program.
1

Peer reviewed publication

Plus several manuscripts under review and in revision.

Grant total reflects full award amounts for projects I contributed to and does not represent personal earnings.

About My Journey

I am a PhD student in Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. I study how worker centers and community organizations help immigrant, low-wage, and undocumented workers build voice, leadership, and collective power—especially when traditional union protections are out of reach. Drawing on oral history, ethnography, and the Power Resource Approach, I look closely at how grassroots organizations create spaces of dignity and democratic participation within unequal labor systems.

This work is personal to me. I come from a working-class Mexican and Salvadoran family in Humboldt Park, Chicago, where I saw how hard people worked and how often their knowledge went unrecognized. Years of fieldwork—from documenting Black resistance in the Mississippi Delta to collaborating with Indigenous communities through the Doris Duke Oral History Project—have deepened that commitment. I approach labor scholarship as a form of listening: grounded in collective memory, accountable to the people who share their stories, and connected to struggles for dignity and justice.

Ethical commitment: I follow IRB-approved protocols and oral-consent practices, but ethics goes beyond compliance. It means treating participants as partners, respecting their dignity, and remaining responsible for how their stories are represented.

Contact

Office Hours

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Academic Email

Curriculum Vitae

ORCID iD

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News & public work

Where the work is moving.

One organized record of upcoming presentations, research training, and community-engaged work. Scroll each rail horizontally; every item keeps the date, place, status, and role explicit.

Conference · September 18, 2026

Migration in Contentious Political Times

Co-organizer & panel moderatorAtkinson Hall · Cornell University

With support from the Migrations Program at Cornell’s Einaudi Center for International Studies, Vicente Celestino Mata, Jr. and I organized a full-day conference that brought together scholars, students, practitioners, and community members. We talked through migration, labor, displacement, borders, belonging, law, inequality, and the political forces shaping the lives of migrants and workers today.

People came from history, anthropology, law, public policy, global development, literature, economics, and labor relations. I’m grateful to everyone who presented, moderated, brought posters, and stayed for the conversation, and especially to Vicente, Katie Fiorella, and Kathy Peck, whose coordination made the day possible.

Henry Lyu Cheng presents “Imagining Foreignness and Making Dissent Deportable” as fellow presenters sit at the panel table — Session 2 · Henry Lyu Cheng on racialized alienage and political agency

Migrations Program banner from the Einaudi Center for International Studies in the Atkinson Hall lobby — Migrations Program · Einaudi Center

A presenter at the podium beside a slide titled From Departure to Return: Reconfiguring Community Across Migration — Session 3 · Labor migration and communal life in Usibamba, Peru

A speaker presents a timeline slide titled Mobilizing Immigrant Worker Rights, from the 2006 May Day marches to 2024 — Mobilizing immigrant worker rights, 2006–2024

Conference attendees seated in Atkinson Hall during a session — A full room in Atkinson Hall

Keynote

“Seeing the Americas Whole”: Richard Rodriguez’s Thesis on Migrants and Migration in the Era of American Carnage

Paul Ortiz, Professor of Labor History, Cornell ILR. Drawing on testimonios and novelists including Carlos Fuentes, Edwige Danticat, and Julissa Arce, the keynote took up assimilation, today’s anti-immigrant politics, and the future of the labor movement.

Faculty panels

Borders, Polarization, and Belonging

Shannon Gleeson (ILR & Brooks School) · Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer (Cornell Law School) · moderated by Vicente Mata, Jr.

A Way Forward: Methodological and Theoretical Perspectives for Studying Migration

Patricia Campos-Medina (ILR Worker Institute) · Bryan L. Sykes (Public Policy & Sociology) · moderated by Adolfho Romero

Research presentations

Kyunghee Kang · Sudeep Sarkar · Min Htut · Henry Lyu Cheng · Saida Hodžić with Sophia Spillane and Darius Tyler · Josefina Rodriguez Pletikosic · Yinka Adetu · Miranda Castro

Posters

Sophia Spillane · Darius Tyler · Lorenzo Morales-DuBois · Shaoshao Tang

Moderators & welcome

Katie Fiorella, Faculty Director, Migrations Program · Adwoa Tiwaa Ofori Atakorah · Zhixia Carrie Mo

View the program booklet (PDF) →Cornell event listing

On the calendar

Accepted appearances and current leadership

October 14–17, 2026Upcoming · AcceptedPresenter

Oral History Association Annual Meeting

“From Crisis to Care: Community Interviews on Worker Centers and Collective Power.”

2026 Annual Meeting →

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Recent field notes

Completed work, newest to oldest

Adolfho Romero with members of the ILR Co-Lab minimum wage research team at the Tompkins County Public Library — ILR Co-Lab minimum wage research team · Tompkins County Public Library

August–September 2026Research team · Ithaca Co-Lab

Tompkins County Minimum Wage Study

Following Resolution 2024-144, Tompkins County asked the Cornell ILR Ithaca Co-Lab to explore a countywide minimum wage above New York’s $16.00. Between March and June our team held eight public convenings and six focus groups with businesses, farms, care providers, public-benefits staff, young workers, and low-wage workers, and gathered more than 100 survey responses and 11 recorded testimonies. We shared the findings at a final public convening at the Tompkins County Public Library on August 27.

I co-authored the final report with Ian Greer, David Bateman, Wen Li Thian, and Matt Vidal, writing the sections on what workers told us. It was released on September 4 and taken up by the County Legislature in September.

Ithaca Voice coverage →Backstory podcast →Ithaca Co-Lab team →

September 202601Cornell University

Presenter

SOLE Workshop

I workshopped my thesis, “Still a Union Town? Worker Power and Labor Field Regeneration in Tompkins County,” with the SOLE Workshop, whose members read the full draft ahead of the session.

August 202607–11New York City

Panelist

American Sociological Association

I presented “Making the Impossible, Possible”: Coalitional Movement Infrastructures and the Fight for the NY Excluded Worker Fund in the Labor-Community Solidarity session.

121st Annual Meeting →

June 1–5, 2026Institute participant

Johns Hopkins Racial Politics Summer Institute

Selected with scholarship support for an intensive graduate institute on racial politics, democratic backsliding, authoritarianism, and institutional power.

Connected racial formation and migration politics to institutions organizing labor, citizenship, and democratic participation.

Adolfho Romero with fellow labor scholars at the 2026 LERA Annual Meeting — Royal Sonesta · Minneapolis, Minnesota

May 28–31, 2026Presenter

LERA 78th Annual Meeting

I presented “Is Ithaca Still a Union Town?” at the Labor and Employment Relations Association Annual Meeting.

The research examines worker power, local labor repertoires, and uneven regeneration in Tompkins County from 1984 to 2026.

May 7, 2026Presenter

Cornell ILR Graduate Student Symposium

I presented “Field Generated Power Resources in Decentralized Labor Ecosystems” at the Global Labor and Work Department’s Graduate Student Symposium.

The presentation examined how worker centers and community organizations generate power beyond the conventional union workplace.

March 202612Goldwin Smith Hall · Cornell

Panelist

Bad Bunny and the Politics of Culture

I joined Rebeca Hey-Colón, Paul Ortiz, Sofia Alexandra Meadows-Muriel, and Isabel Padilla to talk about what Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show meant for race, immigration, and colonialism in a dark political moment.

Event listing →

Community members gathered for an immigrant-rights action and safety patrol — Downtown Ithaca · Ithaca, New York

January 30, 2026Safety-patrol participant

Community safety and immigrant rights

I participated in a community safety patrol supporting immigrant neighbors alongside Indivisible, No Más Lágrimas, Ana Ortiz, and local partners.

My role was supportive: helping maintain a safer public space while community leaders and families made their own demands visible.

August 18–21, 2025Participant · Doctoral researcher

Urban Ethnography Lab Summer School

The summer school treated ethnography as the disciplined construction of evidence rather than neutral data collection.

We worked through interviewing, interaction analysis, memoing, evidentiary warrants, deviant cases, epistemological vigilance, and non-extractive ethics.

May 5–9, 2025Participant · Cornell researcher

Queen Mary–Cornell Global Migration Spring School

I joined a cross-disciplinary cohort examining migration through geography, history, law, public health, and policy.

The program sharpened how I connect migrant labor and displacement to urban governance, borders, and institutional exclusion.

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Inside the thesis archive

Reading worker power through its own press.

My thesis research follows how workers and community organizations in Tompkins County built collective capacity beyond the traditional union hall. The Working Press and The Workers’ Edge show how those groups explained workplace struggles, connected campaigns, and created a public language of solidarity.

November 1987 cover of The Working Press with the headline Ithaca Is a Union Town — **“Ithaca Is a Union Town”** *The Working Press*, November 1987 · Archival documentation by Adolfho Romero

Working Press article about organizing Rubbermaid workers in Cortland — **Organizing beyond one workplace** *The Working Press* · Rubbermaid workers in Cortland

Summer 2019 cover of The Workers' Edge from the Tompkins County Workers' Center — **“We’re Stronger Together”** *The Workers’ Edge*, Summer 2019 · Tompkins County Workers’ Center

The question guiding this work: What kinds of power become possible when workers build their own institutions, media, relationships, and memory?

Open the searchable Working Press archive Explore the research and public archive

Recognition & support

Honors that sustain the work.

Selected fellowships and awards supporting doctoral research, migration scholarship, and continued participation in academic communities.

View honors on the CV →

2026

Industrial and Labor Research Award

Cornell ILR research support for the current doctoral program.

2025–2026

Graduate Migration Fellow

Migrations Program · Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. Fellow profile →

2025

Benjamin Miller Fellowship Award

Graduate fellowship support for academic development.

2017–Present

Ronald E. McNair Scholar

Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program scholar and research community member.

Selected recognition only. The full curriculum vitae includes additional scholarships, travel grants, certificates, and community-engagement awards.

PhD Student • Cornell ILR

Research Impact & Achievements