Cristina S. Méndez (she/ella) is a Chicana educator, scholar, and poet. She is currently a doctoral candidate in the School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley and is also a member of the designated emphasis in Indigenous Language Revitalization. Her research focuses on the lived experiences and sense-making of Maya Mam women lideresas who organize for the vitality of their language and culture, as well as for the wellbeing of their communities across Guatemala, México, and the United States. Cristina engages in collaborative research with Mam community members on...
Ahkeel Mestayer is a professional musician and ethnomusicologist from San Francisco. His research and performance interests are Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian music. Ahkeel has traveled across Europe and Latin America performing and is a voting member of the Grammy Academy. His current research project is a comparison of musical transculturation processes in Matanzas, Cuba and Salvador, Brazil. Specifically, he is interested in exploring the concept of Black Cosmopolitanism across African ethnic groups in Cuba and Brazil and its relationship to music.
Angela Pastorelli-Sosa is Ph.D. candidate in the History of Art Department at the University of California, Berkeley. She works on modern and contemporary art of the Americas, with a focus on conceptual and mixed media practices that engage colonial legacies, histories of migration, and the mutability of identity. Her dissertation, “X Marks the Spot: Latinx Artists Mapping Space,” focuses on four Latinx-identifying artists whose works consider historical and cultural material objects as entry points for linking overdetermined constructions of geographies to essentialized notions of...
Everardo Reyes (Rarámuri and Chicanx) is a fourth-year doctoral student in Music (Ethnomusicology) whose research focuses on the intersections between music, social movements, and Indigenous self-determination. His dissertation research focuses specifically on the contemporary sonic and political influences of the 1969 Occupation of Alcatraz Island by Indians of All Tribes on Indigenous social movements. Ever holds his BA (2017, University of Northern Colorado) and MA (2019, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) in Sociology, as well as an MA (2021) in Music (Ethnomusicology)...
Henry Leonel Sales Hernandez is a first-year PhD student in the Graduate School of Education’s Critical Studies of Race, Class, and Gender program. His interests are indigenous language revitalization, the cultural and social challenges that indigenous Mayas face while living in the Bay Area, and the importance of language and culture in diverse communities in Oakland schools.
Alice is a Ph.D. candidate in the Berkeley School of Education. An interdisciplinary social scientist and ethnographer, she studies youth identity formation and political development/ civic engagement; education and social movements; language, literacy, and learning practices across in-person and digital spaces; and interconnections between local and global structures of oppression and resistance. Her dissertation is a multi-sited ethnographic study that examines the unprecedented rise of youth movements in Brazil and has been supported by grants and fellowships including the Fulbright-...