Jimmy Aguilar

Jimmy Aguilar (he/him/his) is a Ph.D. Candidate in Education Policy at the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education, advised by Dr. Julie R. Posselt, with a concurrent Master of Science in Integrated Design, Business, and Technology at USC's Iovine and Young Academy.

Aguilar is an organizational and education policy scholar whose work draws on policy implementation and science and technology studies to examine how institutions govern access and opportunity. He focuses specifically on how legal mandates and political directives become encoded in the digital and organizational infrastructures of public institutions. His research advances scholarship on sociotechnical systems and the politics of policy implementation in the context of digital governance, and appears in both peer-reviewed journals across education and public policy as well as public outlets including The New York Times.

His broader research program investigates how emerging technologies, including AI and algorithmic systems, reshape governance and institutional accountability across public institutions, and what those shifts mean for policy design and democratic oversight.

Aguilar holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Chicana/o Studies from UCLA and a Master of Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. A Gates Millennium Scholar since 2015, he is one of a small number of recipients whose award has supported continuous study from undergraduate through doctoral education.

• Aguilar, J., Posselt, J. R., Lue, K., & Anglón, G. C. (2025). Negotiating legal compliance and social commitments in graduate admissions. Educational Policy, 08959048261416021.
• Aguilar, J., Torres, G. M., & Macias, A. J. (2025). Insider research: Reflexivity, responsibility, and community-informed approaches. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 102345.