Gaye Theresa Johnson is an Associate Professor of Chicana/o and Central American Studies and an affiliate in the Department of African American Studies at UCLA. A historian of freedom struggles and cultural politics who is deeply invested in the community, she is also a lead facilitator and trainer in healing justice work for numerous social justice movement spaces across the nation. 

Johnson is a community-engaged scholar and an advocate for grassroots organizing, primarily in farmworkers’ rights, reproductive justice, and housing struggles. She is a past Board President of the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE) in Ventura, California, a present board member with California Latinas for Reproductive Justice, and an advisory board member for the Goldin Institute and the Rosenberg Fund for Children. She wrote the curriculum and trained high school teachers to offer the first Ethnic and Social Justice Studies in the Ventura Unified School District, and worked with a coalition of community members to compel the school board to make the course a requirement for K-12 education in the county. 

Johnson has authored four books. Spaces of Conflict, Sounds of Solidarity: Music, Race, and Spatial Entitlement (University of California Press, 2013), is a history of political coalition building and spatial struggles among Black and Brown freedom seekers in Los Angeles.  Her second book, co-edited with Alexander Lubin, is Futures of Black Radicalism (Verso Press, 2017). A forthcoming, co-edited manuscript with Ananya Roy, Veronika Zablotsky, Maite Zubuairre, and Leisy Ábrego titled Sanctuary Spaces: Reworlding Humanism is due out in Fall 2024 (Duke University Press).  Finally, Rings of Dissent: Boxing and the Performance of Rebellion (University of Illinois Press, 2025), is a co-edited volume with sports scholars David J. Leonard and Rodolfo Mondragón.

Gaye's proudest achievement is being a mother and a part of the circle of friends and family that constitute the core of her life.