Professor Almeida is the Chair of Sociology at the University of California, Merced. His research centers on the efficacy of collective mobilization.  He has documented dozens of large-scale campaigns whereby ordinary citizens and excluded social groups mobilized to protect themselves from the loss of vital necessities of health care, pensions, water/sewer services, utilities, environmental health, and social citizenship rights.  These studies are driven by a larger concern for understanding the conditions under which societies and communities successfully maintain access to basic public goods and services.