Isaac Felix

Isaac A. Félix (he/him) is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a learning scientist whose research centers on education, learning, and culture across the México–U.S. border, with a particular focus on the Tijuana–San Diego region. Isaac earned a bachelor’s degree in Human Biology and Society and Chicana/o Studies from UCLA, and a Master of Arts in Education from UC Berkeley.

Anchored in cultural-historical approaches to learning and human development, Isaac’s dissertation employs qualitative methods to examine the expansive forms of learning that unfold through the everyday movements of transfronterizx high school youth—U.S. citizens who live in Mexican border cities and cross the border daily to attend school in the United States—as they navigate the educational, sociopolitical, and cultural ecologies that shape their cross-border lives across the Tijuana–San Diego region.

Isaac is the recipient of the 2025–2026 AERA Minority Dissertation Fellowship and previously received the 2022 Ford Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellowship from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. His work has been published in TESOL Quarterly, and he is also the recipient of the J. Michael Parker Award from the Literacy Research Association for his forthcoming study on transfronterizx commuters’ border-crossing literacy and learning practices within online social media ecologies.