Current Working Groups
For Working Group events that are open to the public, see our Event Series page.
The Anticolonial Workshop
The Anticolonial Workshop centers anticolonial projects in the Caribbean, its global diaspora and anticolonial traditions and struggles around the world. The workshop brings together UC Berkeley students and faculty across disciplines to ground our understanding of what “anticolonial” means in our theory, methods, and praxis. The workshop is a space for knowledge exchange and feedback on work-in-progress including papers, grant proposals, abstracts, and other materials. Contact, Anna Palmer annapalmer@berkeley.edu.Berkeley Latin American and Caribbean History (BLACH)
CINETECA: Latin American Film
The mission of this working group is to stage a conversation between contemporary Latin American cinema, historical film movements like El Nuevo Cine and Tercer Cine, and the critical articulation of these movements by thinkers, writers, and filmmakers. We will focus on independent, less commercial films treating political and social issues prevalent in Latin America and the Caribbean, with special attention paid to queer, feminist, indigenous, Afrolatine, migrant cinemas, and student movements. The group will analyze films across different national contexts to better understand how directors responded to and represented the corresponding historical moments, whether they be revolutions, dictatorships, social movements, and processes of modernization. The working group will meet biweekly for film screenings preceded by an introduction to the work and followed by guided discussions. Each session will center on one feature-length film, complemented by a brief reading about the film or themes surrounding it. Whenever possible, we will invite guest speakers to contribute to our conversations. All disciplines and levels of familiarity with film studies are welcome. Contacts: Emma Lloyd, emma_lloyd@berkeley.edu; Coral del Mar Murphy, Marcos coral_murphy@berkeley.edu.
Crimmigration
The Berkeley Crimmigration Working Group critically interrogates the complexities of the immigration system that have led and continue to lead to the criminalization of migrants and migration. Over the course of the academic year we will join in community and conversation with other scholars across various disciplines to engage critically with theories of criminality, borders, and migration. Our event series is open to students and faculty across different fields and provides a supportive platform for interested scholars to network and collaborate on the overarching field of crimmigration.
Digital Ecologies: Transformations and Environmental Justice in Latin America
The Digital Ecologies working group brings together graduate students, undergraduate researchers, and faculty from various disciplines to examine the socio-environmental impacts of digital transformations across Latin America. Currently centered on El Salvador, where Bitcoin has been adopted as legal tender and a national ban on metal mining has been reversed, the group explores how emerging technologies, such as AI infrastructure, cryptocurrency, and energy-intensive digital industries, are transforming ecosystems, land governance, and vulnerable communities.
Using interdisciplinary approaches including sentiment analysis, visual ethnography, and remote sensing with Google Earth Engine, the group investigates how digital development intersects with environmental health, climate justice, and social equity. Digital Ecologies meets biweekly and will conclude with student-led research showcases at the end of the Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 semesters.
New members are warmly encouraged to join. To get involved or learn more, please contact the organizer, Deibi Sibrian (deibi.sibrian@berkeley.edu).
Mexican Studies
How do writers and scholars approach, challenge, and reconstruct the cultural archive in Mexico? The Mexican Studies Working Group will explore this and related questions during the 2025-2026 academic year. The group welcomes graduate students and faculty whose research focuses on or relates to the languages, literatures, and cultures of Mexico. This group also aims to incorporate works outside the Mexican border and its literary canon, seeking to understand and study different traditions that expand, challenge, and explore the notions of Mexican identity and culture. As our field shifts away from prioritizing literature, our goal is to map the different archival forms that can be part of future humanities research about Mexico. Bringing together a group of Mexican scholars at Berkeley is the beginning of a long-term project to develop the community and support Mexican Studies on campus. The group meets twice a month to discuss recent scholarly work in the field of Mexican Studies, share and workshop member’s research projects, and host graduate student and faculty speakers conducting research on Mexican cultural production. Please contact Emiliano Arizmendi-Castilla arizcase@berkeley.edu or Alejandra Decker adecker@berkeley.edu for more information.
Past Working Groups
2024-25 Working Groups
Berkeley Latin American and Caribbean History
Pensamento Racial Brasileiro Working Group
The Brazilian Racial Thought Working Group aims to support graduate students across academic disciplines at UC Berkeley, as well as scholars at other institutions, theorizing the racial formation of Brazil in relation to the Americas. The working group will support scholars and students across academic disciplines to build expertise on the literature on race relations in Brazil, with a particular emphasis on the work of Afro-Brazilian feminist scholars such as Beatriz Nascimento, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Lélia Gonzalez, Sueli Carneiro, and Leda Maria Martins. Alongside written theory, the working group also studies Brazilian cultural productions that theorize race and processes of race-making in Brazil. The working group meets biweekly at CLACS and is open to new members.
Socionatures Working Group
Through an interdisciplinary approach, the proposed event series interrogates how people from different positionalities in Latin America address pressing environmental issues. Over three installments throughout the academic year, we will invite scholars who, in their forms of researching, writing, and engaged scholarship, are studying struggles for territorial and water rights, dignified livelihoods, food sovereignty, and environmental knowledge. Our event series will emphasize how approaching these pressing environmental problems involves an articulation of humans and more-than humans.
2023-24 Working Groups
Language Revitalization Working Group
The Language Revitalization Working Group critically examines theories, methodologies, and applications of language revitalization in a variety of world contexts. It provides a centralized venue for interdisciplinary researchers and practitioners of language revitalization to share, present, discuss, and improve their language revitalization efforts.
Socionatures Working Group
Through an interdisciplinary approach, the proposed event series interrogates how people from different positionalities in Latin America address pressing environmental issues. Over three installments throughout the academic year, we will invite scholars who, in their forms of researching, writing, and engaged scholarship, are studying struggles for territorial and water rights, dignified livelihoods, food sovereignty, and environmental knowledge. Our event series will emphasize how approaching these pressing environmental problems involves an articulation of humans and more-than humans.
2022-23 Working Groups
Language Revitalization Working Group
The Language Revitalization Working Group critically examines theories, methodologies, and applications of language revitalization in a variety of world contexts. It provides a centralized venue for interdisciplinary researchers and practitioners of language revitalization to share, present, discuss, and improve their language revitalization efforts.
Latinx in Public Policy Working Group
2021-22 Working Groups
Andean Studies Working Group
The Andean Studies: Language and Culture working group provides a space for students, faculty, and community members interested in the multifaceted Andes region and its cultures, particularly through the study of Quechua/Kichwa, the most widely spoken native language in the Americas.
Language Revitalization Working Group
The Language Revitalization Working Group (LRWG) focuses on discussing theories, methodologies, and applications of language revitalization (LR) in a variety of world contexts, including a special focus this year on Latin America. Our principal goal for the LRWG is to provide a centralized venue for conversation and collaboration between the interdisciplinary researchers and practitioners of language revitalization at UC Berkeley. In LRWG we discuss, critically examine, and build upon activities related to the promotion of indigenous, endangered, minority, and non-dominant languages through linguistic work, language classes, language camps, pedagogical materials, curricula, and strategies for community building. Some of the meetings are devoted to discussing papers on theories and methods of endangered language revitalization, while others feature presentations by people within and outside UC Berkeley who are currently engaged in LR activities. LRWG provides a space to share experiences and practices, benefitting the development of these LR projects.
Latin American Cities Working Group
The Latin American Cities Working Group provides a collaborative forum for people within and outside UC Berkeley to present research on urbanization, urban life, and urban policy in Latin America. The “urban” condition in Latin America is complex and varied, calling for an engagement with different research approaches and interdisciplinary perspectives. Through workshops, invited presentations, and writing groups, we aim to create a space in which these multiple perspectives can come together to advance scholarship on the historical and contemporary dynamics of Latin American cities. Beyond providing a space for graduate students and faculty from UC Berkeley to present and discuss their papers, we will also focus on inviting researchers based on Latin American institutions to present their recent work. Hence, expanding our connection to Latin American scholarship.
Latin American and Caribbean Socionatures Working Group
The Latin American and Caribbean Socionatures Working Group is an interdisciplinary community focused on exploring the histories, dynamics, and conflicts surrounding the co-constitution of nature-society relations across the region and its fluid boundaries. The group is composed principally of doctoral students who share an interest in scholarly work on nature, politics, and society and welcomes a wide array of methodological approaches from the humanities and social sciences. The space promotes knowledge exchanges, and mutual learning through an annual public seminar and our monthly workshop where we discuss original manuscripts from group members and other guests from campus and elsewhere in the Bay Area, the US, and LAC. The topics include, but are not limited to, the politics of nature in cities and rural areas, environmental justice struggles, the social and political dimensions of biological science, new materialisms, multispecies approaches, the climate crisis, among others.
2020-21 Working Groups
Amanecer Working Group
The Amanecer working group is an undergraduate and graduate student organization that publishes in a Spanish and Portuguese journal dedicated to the study of language, literature, and cultures with a section for creative writing. We will provide a safe place for students to explore different creative techniques and outlets, and gain experience in proofreading, editing, and publishing. We will be researching topics related to Latin America, such as the process of dubbing and subbing foreign-language content into Spanish, the pronunciations of varying Spanish phonemes, and different grammatical structures and motifs in literary works. We welcome all research ideas! This working group aims to encourage curiosity and research, and we welcome everyone!
Andean Studies Working Group
The Andean Studies: Language and Culture working group provides a space for students, faculty, and community members interested in the multifaceted Andes region and its cultures, particularly through the study of Quechua/Kichwa, the most widely spoken native language in the Americas.
Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean (BLAC)
The Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean (BLAC) working group envisages an interdisciplinary close reading of the Afro-diasporic experience across the region and its interpretive manifestations in the humanities and social sciences. While open to all graduate students, this group is comprised principally of doctoral students in the qualifying or thesis/dissertation-writing stage who are working through a distinct set of questions including but not limited to everyday cultural production, identity, performance, ecology, policy, inequality, and state violence, followed by an even vaster array of methodological approaches.
Guatemala Scholar-Activists Working Group
The Guatemala Scholar-Activists Working Group aims to bring together scholar-activists and community organizers in the US and Guatemala to raise awareness about the social and political context of Guatemala and to take actionable steps that promote global justice and equity. Leveraging the collective expertise of UC Berkeley researchers, community-based organizations working on the ground in Guatemala, and international solidarity organizations, the group aims to pay particular attention to the role of US international policy and economic policy, and how these policies come to bear in the lives of marginalized communities in Guatemala. These issues will be studied in global and local perspective in an effort to determine how such policies might be improved and how communities struggling with violations of their rights might be supported. Issues of focus will include: Indigenous rights; rights to land, water, and natural resources; and gender equity; migration; mining injustice; climate change and health disparities. The group is open to anyone and everyone who is interested in activist work in Guatemala, and especially aims to bring together various generations of scholars and activists, including undergraduate and graduate students, as well as UC Berkeley faculty and staff.
Language Revitalization Working Group
The Language Revitalization Working Group (LRWG) focuses on discussing theories, methodologies, and applications of language revitalization (LR) in a variety of world contexts, including a special focus this year on Latin America. Our principal goal for the LRWG is to provide a centralized venue for conversation and collaboration between the interdisciplinary researchers and practitioners of language revitalization at UC Berkeley. In LRWG we discuss, critically examine, and build upon activities related to the promotion of indigenous, endangered, minority, and non-dominant languages through linguistic work, language classes, language camps, pedagogical materials, curricula, and strategies for community building. Some of the meetings are devoted to discussing papers on theories and methods of endangered language revitalization, while others feature presentations by people within and outside UC Berkeley who are currently engaged in LR activities. LRWG provides a space to share experiences and practices, benefitting the development of these LR projects.
Latin American Politics Working Group
The Latin American Politics Working Group (LAPWG) provides graduate students, faculty, and other invited speakers an interdisciplinary forum to present research on issues related to Latin American politics, broadly construed. Currently, our focus revolves around two central themes: urban politics and public security. The first category focuses on the provision of public goods, infrastructure, and governance in Latin American cities while the second focuses on drug trafficking violence and post-conflict control/state capacity. On occasion, we invite both academic and non-academic speakers such as graduate students and professors as well as politicians, bureaucrats, and other civic organization leaders who have real world experience in the region. On the whole, this working group strives to advance serious scholarship related to the politics of Latin America.