Current Board

President (November 2020-2022)

Jonathan Rosa is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education, Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, and, by courtesy, Departments of Anthropology and Linguistics, at Stanford University. His research analyzes the interplay between racial marginalization, linguistic stigmatization, and educational inequity. Dr. Rosa collaborates with schools and communities to track these phenomena and develop tools for understanding and eradicating the forms of disparity to which they correspond. He is author of the book Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad (2019, Oxford University Press) and co-editor of the volume Language and Social Justice in Practice (2019, Routledge). Dr. Rosa’s research has been supported by competitive grants and fellowships awarded by organizations including the National Science Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Social Science Research Council, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and Ford Foundation. His work has appeared in scholarly journals such as the Harvard Educational Review, American Ethnologist, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, and Language in Society, as well as media outlets such as MSNBC, NPR, CNN, and Univision. In recognition of this work, Dr. Rosa received the 2018 Charles A. Ferguson Award for Outstanding Scholarship from the Center for Applied Linguistics. Dr. Rosa obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, and his B.A. in Linguistics and Educational Studies from Swarthmore College.

President-Elect (November 2020-2022)

Leo R. Chavez is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Anthropology. Dr. Chavez received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Stanford University. His research has focused on various aspects of the migration experience: families, work, immigration status, access to health care, cancer and Latinas, and media representations.  

In addition to scores of academic articles, he is the author of Shadowed Lives: Undocumented Immigrants in American Society (1st edition 1992; 3rd Edition, Wadsworth/Cengage Learning 2013); Covering Immigration:  Popular Images and the Politics of the Nation (University of California Press 2001); The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation (Stanford University Press, 1st edition 2008; 2nd edition 2013); and Anchor Babies and the Challenge of Birthright Citizenship (Stanford University Press, 2017). His current research examines the effects of political rhetoric, especially anti-Latino and anti-immigrant rhetoric, on emotions and psychological well-being.

Dr. Chavez has received a number of awards over his career. In 1992 he was received UCI Lauds and Laurels Award for Distinguished Teacher. He received the Margaret Mead Award from the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology in 1993, the Association of Latina and Latino Anthropologists’ Book Award for The Latino Threat in 2009, and the Society for the Anthropology of North America’s award for Distinguished Achievement in the Critical Study of North America in 2009. He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2018. The Association of Latina and Latino Anthropologists (ALLA) gave him the Distinguished Career Award for 2019. The Society for Applied Anthropology awarded him the Bronislaw Malinowski Award, 2021, for distinguished lifetime contributions. 

Secretary-Treasurer (2021-2023)

Lourdes Gutiérrez Nájera was born in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and migrated with her family to Los Angeles, California as a child. My experiences as a Mexican immigrant and a fronteriza, a person who hails from the U.S.-Mexico border, have shaped a deepened curiosity about cultural differences, race, and issues of identity. As a professor in Fairhaven and Latinx Studies/American Cultural Studies, I am vested in explorations of immigration, ethnicity, indigeneity, citizenship & belonging, borders, and global & transnational processes.

Graduate Student Representative (2021-2023)

Sara Isabel Castro Font is a PhD Candidate at UCLA. Her research explores the role of language and other semiotic resources in mediating belonging in globalized Latin American urban spaces. Her research interests include linguistic landscapes; semiotic and language ideologies; political economy; affect; and Latin America and the Caribbean.

Members at Large (2019-2022)

Artist-scholar-producer, Alex E. Chávez is the Nancy O’Neill Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, where he is also a Faculty Fellow of the Institute for Latino Studies. His research explores articulations of Latinx sounds and aurality in relation to race, place-making, and the intimacies that bind lives across physical and cultural borders. He is the author of the multi-award-winning book Sounds of Crossing: Music, Migration, and the Aural Poetics of Huapango Arribeño (Duke University Press, 2017)—recipient of the Association of Latina/o and Latinx Anthropologists book prize (2018). And in 2016 he produced the Smithsonian Folkways album Serrano de Corázon (Highlander at Heart).

He has consistently crossed the boundary between performer and ethnographer in the realms of academic research and publicly engaged work as an artist and producer. Chávez has recorded and toured with his own music projects, composed documentary scores (including Emmy Award-winning El Despertar [2016]), and collaborated with Grammy Award-winning and Grammy Award-nominated artists.

He is co-editor of the forthcoming volume Ethnographic Refusals / Unruly Latinidades (S.A.R. Press), which grows out of an Advanced Seminar he co-chaired at the School for Advanced Research in 2019.

In 2020, he was named one of ten Mellon Emerging Faculty Leaders by the Institute for Citizens and Scholars (formerly the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation), and also recently concluded a National Endowment for the Humanities Long-Term Fellowship at the Newberry Library in Chicago. He currently also serves as a Governor on the Chicago Chapter Board of the Recording Academy.

Dr. Guillermina G. Núñez-Mchiri is Director of Women and Gender Studies and an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas at El Paso. Dr. Núñez received her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California Riverside in 2006, her MA in Latin American Studies in 1998, and her BA in International Business in 1994 from San Diego State University. Dr. Núñez-Mchiri began teaching at UTEP since 2004-2005. She teaches courses in Ethnographic research methods; Interdisciplinary Feminist theory and Methods, Anthropology of Food, Gender, and Culture for the College of Liberal Arts and Culture. She also teaches an online course on Death, Dying, and Bereavement for the College of Health Sciences. Her classes incorporate research and community engagement opportunities through service learning. She received the UT Regents Outstanding Teaching Award in 2012.

Dr. Núñez-Mchiri is an applied anthropologist who promotes service learning and engaged scholarship efforts on the U.S.-Mexico Border. She is the academic partner to Wise Latina International, a non-profit organization that empowers Latinas through the arts and entertainment. She is currently Co-Chair for the L.E.A.D. project, an executive leadership program that prepares women with the skills and tools necessary for them to launch projects and initiatives that support the development of Latinas, their families, and community. Dr. Núñez-Mchiri has a 7 year partnership with the City of El Paso’s Park and Recreation Department working with older adult athletes who are seeking to challenge the stigmas of aging through active living and competition in physical activities. She specializes on ethnographic research on the U.S.-Mexico border region and has published on a number of topics related to colonias, immigration and human rights, housing and social justice, Latina identity, Latinas in STEM fields, immigrant youth and education, and the applications of Ethnography and Service Learning in higher education. Her most recent publication addresses women negotiating food insecurity in colonias in the El Paso del Norte border region.

Patricia Zavella completed her Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Currently she is a Professor Emerita of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has published in the intersection of Chicanx/Latinx studies, anthropology, and feminist studies on poverty, family, sexuality, health, work, transnational migration, and women’s social activism. Her most recent work is “‘While You Are Struggling, You are Healing’: Latinas Enact Poder through the Movement for Reproductive Justice” in Ethnographic Refusals/Unruly Latinidades (edited by Alex E. Chávez and Gina M. Pérez, School for Advanced Research Press, 2022). Her books include The Movement for Reproductive Justice: Empowering Women of Color through Social Activism (New York University Press 2020); I’m Neither Here nor There:” Mexicans Quotidian Struggles with Migration and Poverty (Duke University Press, 2011); Women and Migration in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands: A Reader (Co-edited with Denise A. Segura, Duke University Press, 2007), Chicana Feminisms: A Critical Reader (Co-edited with Gabriela Arredondo, Aída Hurtado, Norma Klahn, and Olga Nájera Ramírez, Duke University Press, 2003 ); and the coauthored Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonios (Duke University Press, 2001) that won the Gustavus Meyers award. Zavella is the recipient of the American Anthropological Association’s Committee on Gender Equity in Anthropology Award, 2016, the Association of Latina and Latino Anthropologists 2016 ALLA Distinguished Career Award, and “NACCS Scholar of the Year” by the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, 2003.

Anthropology News Editor (2019-2022)

Julie Torres is an Assistant Professor of Women’s and Ethnic Studies and the Latina/o/x Studies Certificate Coordinator at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. She earned a Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an M.A. in Anthropology and Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research and teaching focuses on issues related to Latinx studies, diaspora, feminism, social activism, transnationalism, and race. She has published in academic venues, such as Anthropology News, CENTRO Journal for the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, and Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism (forthcoming). She is currently working on a book manuscript titled, In Times of Crisis: Puerto Rican Activism, Gender, and Belonging in Orlando, which ethnographically examines Puerto Rican women’s activism in Orlando, Florida in light of contemporary crises. In 2021, the dissertation on which the book is based was awarded the Virginia Sanchez-Korrol PRSA Dissertation Award.

Communications Team

Lisa Moore Cuéllar (she/her/ella) is a Colombian-Floridian scholar who graduated in 2020 from the University of Chicago with a Master’s degree concentrated in Anthropology and Gender & Sexuality Studies. Her Master’s thesis, Mujeres Latinas en Acción: Anti-Oppressive Practice through Panethnic Matching- which won the 2020 ALLA Graduate Student Paper Award, focused on how the domestic violence workers at MLEA simultaneously mobilize latinidad to build community and navigate their intersectional differences to build coalition while serving their mainly 1st generation Latin American immigrant survivor program participants. This ethnographic study with 9 months of field work as an intake worker is the beginning of a long-term project detailing the nuanced ways panethnicity and other similar experiences are mobilized to break cycles of oppression on all levels, interpersonal and structural, through consciousness raising. Lisa took some time off from academia to provide High School Equivalency in Spanish preparation courses to the Latine community of rural western North Carolina and study Loyola’s Online Bilingual MSW while preparing to apply for a PhD in medical/ psychological anthropology. She aspires to focus her dissertation on the mutual healing found in many movements.

Vanessa Castañeda earned her Ph.D. in Latin American Studies from Tulane University and is currently the Guarini Dean’s Postdoctoral Fellow in Afro-Latinx and/or Afro-Latin American Studies. Her research centers on the baianas de acarajé, predominantly older, working-class Black women who are street vendors in Salvador, Brazil, that sell typical regional foods with culinary origins in West Africa. They also have come to exist as central icons of the African heritage tourism and cultural figures of regional and national Brazilian identity. Using interdisciplinary methodologies, including archival research and eighteen months of community-based ethnographic fieldwork with the Association of Baianas (ABAM), Vanessa’s work reconceptualizes the baianas as political agents of Black feminism for self and collective liberation. She shows how the women have mastered navigating their mobility in accessing multiple spaces of power, both figuratively and spatially. As a first-generation student herself, Vanessa is committed to diversity, inclusion, and institutional equity. At Tulane University, she was the graduate assistant for the Office of Multicultural Affairs and Gender & Sexual Diversity for three years and in 2016, she founded the Undocumented Student Support Committee.