Mayorga-Gallo  completed her Ph.D. in Sociology at Duke University and joined the department in 2012. Her research interests include racial and ethnic stratification; urban and community sociology; Latino/a migration; and popular culture. Her current research focuses on the interactions and relationships in multiethnic neighborhoods. Mayorga-Gallo is particularly interested in the relationship between spatial and social distance and redefining our contemporary understandings of integration. She recently completed a mixed methods study of a multiethnic neighborhood in Durham, North Carolina and will continue her neighborhood-based work in Cincinnati, Ohio.

While at Duke her dissertation is an in-depth study of social life in a multiethnic Southern neighborhood.  She was specifically interested in the effects of Latina/o migration on neighborhoods in a historically Black and White city. Mayorga-Gallo also conducted research on contemporary racial humor, analyzing the inclusion of color-blind racism frames in television programs like Chappelle's Show Mind of Mencia.