Professor Perez's research focuses on:

• the negotiations and practices of shifting gender roles and the maintenance of traditional community identity in Mexico;
• land reform and the movement of rural lands to peri-urban space;
• tourism and ceramic production;
• squatter settlements and colonias populares;
• lead poisoning and the strategies of development in Mexico;
• binational youth identity and the effects of immigration on family structure;
• the creation of community among Mexican immigrants and Mexican American Identity in the Southwestern region of the United States.

The comparative data resulting from her research allows Dr. Pérez to facilitate the complex negotiations that Mexicanos face, regardless of their geographic location, in terms of synthesizing global economies and political structures with traditional practices. Within the United States, Dr. Pérez has focused on policy implications for Mexicanos and U.S. born Mexican Americans in urban planning, community policing, and education.

She is the recipient of a National Science Foundation REU Grant that provides opportunities for Mexicanos and other under-represented groups in higher education and has been a Policy Fellow for the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) and Educational Testing Services (ETS) Fellowship on Public Policy (2000-2002).

Some of her recent publications include, "Savoring the Taste of Home: The pervasiveness of lead poisoning from ceramic and its implications in transnational care packages" (forthcoming 2010); "Narratives from the Other Side: the revelations and dynamics of a binational penpal program" (forthcoming 2010); "Challenges to Motherhood: The Moral Economy of Oaxacan Ceramic Production and the Politics of Reproduction" (2007); "The Misunderstanding of Mexican Community Life in Urban Apartment Space: a case study in applied anthropology and community policing" (2006); “From Ejido to Colonia : Reforms to Article 27 and the Formation of an Urban Landscape in Oaxaca” (2003), “Practicing Theory Through Women's Bodies: Public Violence and Women's Strategies of Power and Place” (2002); “Fiesta as Tradition, Fiesta as Change: Ritual, Alcohol and Violence in a Mexican Community”(2000), “The Green Glazed Ceramic of Oaxaca: The wealth verses health debate”(1999), and “In the Shadow of Our Ancestors: Discovering the Hidden Treasures of Atzompa, Oaxaca”(2000). Her ethnography, Molding Our Lives From Clay: Renegotiating Gender and Community in Oaxaca , is forthcoming.