Diego F. Leal

Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Arizona

School of Sociology
University of Arizona
1145 E. South Campus Dr., 
Social Sciences, Rm. 400
Tucson, AZ, 85721
dflc [at] arizona [dot] edu

I'm an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Arizona. I was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia.

I'm broadly interested on the social network aspects of relational inequalities, particularly as they manifest in the emergence and evolution of international migration dynamics and health behaviors.

On those two fronts, I'm currently working on analyzing the enforced disappearance (i.e., detentions where detainees' location and/or fate is unknown) of international migrants and asylum seekers carried out by the U.S. government on U.S. soil and on the relationship between social networks and health behaviors, with a focus the use of nicotine products in the U.S. and Mexico.

I use a variety of methods, from interviews and focus groups to inferential network analysis (including the development of novel software architecture) and agent-based computational models. My work has been published in the American Journal of Sociology, Social Networks, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Sociological Methods & Research, and several other outlets.

Among others, I'm currently the Principal Investigator (jointly with Dr. James Thrasher) in a National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 grant to study peer adolescent networks and nicotine products use in the U.S. and Mexico. I have been awarded over $3 million in research grants as a Principal Investigator.