Graduate Student Affiliate

Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: Geography
Research Areas (themes, countries): agrarian studies, Black geographies, digitalization, science and technology studies, Colombia
Dissertation Title: Programmed Landcapes: The Production of Digital Nature in the Valle del Cauca
Abstract of Dissertation Work: I contextualize the ubiquity of digital development discourses and initiatives in the Valle del Cauca, demonstrating how efforts to resolve the “digital divide” are themselves shaped by regional land and labor conflicts that reflect longstanding race and class antagonisms. Through an institutional ethnography of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, I use situated research examining the center’s work amidst agrarian transformations in the Valley. I engage in theoretical debates in science and technology studies, political ecology, and related interdisciplinary fields questioning the impact of digital processes on nature, labor, and subjectivity. Technology is embedded within thick webs of history, social networks, and political processes, reflecting these linkages while also belying them. I complicate the depiction of digitalization as a unidirectional application of the “smart” digital to “backwards”, analog-processes of rural farming. Through questioning the Valley’s history as a site of international development, an agro-technological frontier, and a space of extreme violence and inequality, I question the normative claims surrounding agricultural digitalization as a solution for socio-ecological crises. The multivalent process of agricultural digitalization requires attention to the politics of how and where scale is created and the frictions that emerge as the universalizing ideals of technological grandeur are interrupted and impacted by situated contexts.
Bio: I explore how (agricultural) data science reproduces particular forms of standardization and homogeneity that constitute racialized and exclusionary forms of international development and environmental management across the global South. I approach questions of the "digital" and the "ecological" from a range of heterodox traditions including Marxist thought, Black studies, and feminist science and technology studies. I have a BA in biology from Macalester College and an MSc in agroecology/soil science from the Universty of Minnesota.
Publications: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alexander-Liebman-2

Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: Art History

Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: English

Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: MFA
School : MGSA
Department: Art and Design
Research Areas (themes, countries): Latinx identity, decolonization, indigeneity, mestizaje, and contemporary art.

Clio Isaacson
Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: History
Research Areas (themes, countries): Latin American History, Women’s and Gender History
Bio: Clio Isaacson is a PhD candidate in Latin American history. Her research focuses on Indigenous women in central Mexico during the colonial period. Her dissertation, “Women of the Nahuatl Annals: Writing the Lives of Women in Late Pre-Hispanic and Early Colonial Mexico,” examines how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Nahuas portrayed women when writing about the history of their own communities in their own language. By centering sources that were written away from the oversight of Spanish authorities, she highlights how Nahuas perceived women and their experiences in the realms of religion, war, politics, and the imposition of Spanish colonial rule. She is a recipient of the Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship.

Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: Ms
School : SAS
Department: Geography

Daniela Mosquera Camacho
Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: Geography
Research Areas (themes, countries): property, peasants, campesinos, campesinas, protected areas, solidarity, energy transition, Colombia, U.S.
Abstract of Dissertation Work: My work examines peasants' (campesinos and campesinas) property configurations in protected areas in northern Colombia –where I collaborate with Martha Forero, a social leader from Cesar– and solidarity networks among Central American rural farmworkers in the north of the U.S –where I collaborate with Mujeres Divinas NY–. I am also interested in extractivism and the energy transition in Colombia. I love drawing, taking photographs, and going on long walks.

Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: Spanish and Portuguese
Project: Transatlatic cultural relations between Spain and Cuba prior the Cuban Revolution
Research Areas (themes, countries): 19th-20th century Spain and Cuba, Visual Culture, Performance and Corporeality, Flamenco and nacional-flamenquismo during Franco's dictatorship in Spain (1939-75)
Dissertation Title: Gypsified Minorities on the Atlantic Stage: Visualizing and Performing Alternative Identities in Spain and Cuba (1900-1959)
Abstract of Dissertation Work: This transatlantic study shows how “Gypsification” enabled queer, non-white, and (neo)colonized minorities in pre-revolutionary Cuba to shape novel conceptualizations of collective identity and sociocultural solidarity.

Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: Art History
Research Areas (themes, countries): Early modern art of the Americas

Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: Art History
Research Areas (themes, countries): Cuba, Puerto Rico, Caribbean, Latinx, Cold War in Latin American & Caribbean Art
Dissertation Title: Bowling for Moscow: Afterlife of Soviet Visual Culture in Cuban Art
Bio: Elvis Fuentes is PhD Candidate in Art History at Rutgers University. He served as curator at El Museo del Barrio New York (2006-2013), where he directed and co-curated, Caribbean: Crossroads of the World, 2012. In 2005, he won the Grand Prix at the 26th International Biennial of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana, Eslovenia, with the curatorial project, Print As Metaphor. Fuentes is Adjunct Lecturer at City College of New York, Lehman College, and the University of Hartford, where he teaches courses on Caribbean art, Latin American art, and Postwar Art. He is currently a Dodge Lawrence Curatorial Fellow at the Zimmerli Museum of Art, Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Fuentes writes regularly for ArtNexus magazine, and is an nominating advisor at CIFO and Prix Pictect.

Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: Art History
Research Areas (themes, countries): Latinx/e Artists, Motherhood/Mothering, Race, Environmental Humanities, borderlands, critical Latinx/e indigeneities
Abstract of Dissertation Work: I am looking at contemporary U.S. Latinx and indigenous visual production, with special interests in Motherhood, race, and the environmental humanities. I am hoping to center my larger project on depictions of motherhood, particularly motherhood at border sites and mothering in treacherous conditions, such as race-based violence, ecological disaster/spillage, and indigenous migration.
Bio: Emma Oslé (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) is a fourth-year Ph.D. Candidate in Art History at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Her current work focuses on contemporary U.S. Latinx and indigenous visual production, with special interests in race, graphic art, eco-art history, and the environmental humanities. She has worked in several museums throughout the United States including MoMA (NYC), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, AR), and multiple smaller institutions and private collections. In addition to her work in Art History, Emma holds BFA’s in both Sculpture and Printmaking from Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, and has shown work throughout the Philadelphia region.

Campus: Newark
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : MGSA
Department: American Studies

Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: Italian

Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: History
Research Areas (themes, countries): Latin America, Women’s and Gender History

Francisco Cantero Soriano
Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: Spanish and Portuguese
Research Areas (themes, countries): Poetry in exile during the Spanish Civil War; bodies and the representation of the queer body in poetry; poetics and poethics; intersectionality; poetic agency; modernities and alterities
Office: Rutgers Academic Building West, 5th floor, Office 5168

Biography:

Francisco Cantero Soriano is a Ph.D. Candidate in Iberian, Latin American, and Luso-Afro-Brazilian Literatures and Cultures at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey (USA). He studied a Master's in Hispanic Studies at Auburn University (Alabama) and a Master's in Hispanic Studies at the University of Cádiz. His current research focuses on the intersection and manifestation of the (queer) body in the poetics of Republican Spanish exile in 20th and 21st century Spain in relation to Latin America, analyzing the linguistic mechanisms of ethical, poetic, and political embodiment in the text. In the field of Comparative Literature, he has argued for the relevance of studying the pictorial and intertextual components in the poetry of Leonard Cohen (1934-2016) as indivisible significants of his poetic work, in relation to the work of Federico García Lorca (1898-1936). During the COVID-19 pandemic in Alabama, he conducted a pictorial translation of García Lorca's work "Poet in New York" into ten paintings, using English translations. He is currently working on an English translation of Agustín Gómez Arcos's (1933-1998) work "Poesías." In the cultural field, he is the founder and director of the academic journal of Spanish literature and art, ÍMPETU, which fosters a collaborative space between academic research and artistic practice with international poets and artists.

Campus: Newark
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : MGSA
Department: Division of Global Affairs
Project: Indigenous communities in Peru

Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: English
Dissertation Title: Maroon Entanglements: Women's and Femmes' Erotic Strategies in Caribbean Narrative
Abstract of Dissertation Work: My dissertation analyzes representations of self-emancipated slaves in contemporary Caribbean narrative as sites where queer sexuality is practiced despite and through compromised agency.
Bio: Isabel Guzzardo Tamargo was born and raised in Puerto Rico. She completed a Master's degree in the English Department at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. She is currently a doctoral candidate in the Graduate Program of Literatures in English at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Her dissertation explores how women and femmes in contemporary Caribbean literature practice marronage as an erotic strategy. She is a principal collaborator of the Puerto Rico Syllabus, a digital resource to understand Puerto Rico’s economic crisis and she is an editor for the Puerto Rico Review.
Publications: “Puerto Rico's Feminist & Queer Maroon Rebellions Have a Soundtrack: It's Plena.” Escribe, Mi Gente Journal, forthcoming January 2022.

Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: Geography

Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: History
Project: Animal collecting in natural history (18th century)
Research Areas (themes, countries): History of Science, Animal History, Scientific Collecting, Colombia, Latin America
Bio: Javier is a Ph.D student in History interested in understanding the relationships between humans and nonhuman animals in Colombia and other parts of Latin America. He is particularly interested in the history of science done in the 18th century. Javier holds a master’s degree in bioethics and his undergraduate studies were in biology. Before joining the Ph.D program in History at Rutgers, he worked as an assistant professor at the Institute of Bioethics of the Javeriana University in Bogotá, Colombia, where he taught courses on environmental and animal ethics.

Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: English

Javiera Madrid-Salazar
Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: Geography
Bio: Javiera Madrid-Salazar’s work sits at the intersection of political ecology, Science and Technology Studies, and postcolonial theory. Her research uses qualitative methods to analyze historical and contemporary resource extraction in Latin America. By focusing on the historical development of the mining sector in Chile, Javiera’s work investigates how scientific knowledge and practices in the geosciences have shaped extraction-centered imaginaries of development and existing social hierarchies. Javiera holds an MA in Global Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a BA in History from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

Campus: Newark
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : MGSA
Department: Division of Global Affairs
Project: Ecuador and the Andean countries; Guarantee Rights; Development Rights vs Environmental Rights; Economic growth"
Research Areas (themes, countries): International and Global Economics, Sustainability, and Political Economy.
Institution: Master of Arts: Economics, Rutgers-Newark (2017 – 2018).
Degree: Doctorate of Philosophy in Global Affairs / Ph.D. Candidate and Fellow Graduate Student
Background: Fields of Study: Global Economic and Urban Development; Environmental and Ecological Economics: Natural Resources, Energy Sustainability, and Policy. Rutgers-Newark (Fall 2020 – present).

Campus: Newark
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : MGSA
Department: Division of Global Affairs
Project: Social production of disaster in Puerto Rico

Campus: Newark
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : MGSA
Department: Division of Global Affairs
Project: COVID-19 impact in Peru

Joshua Anthony
Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: History
Research Areas (themes, countries): Latin American History, Global and Comparative
Bio: Josh Anthony is a doctoral candidate studying the Indigenous history of Mexico. His dissertation, "A Nahua Family History: Kinship and Colonialism in Amaquemecan Chalco, 1465-1630" uses Nahuatl-language sources to follow one Indigenous family as they weathered Aztec conquest, the Spanish invasion, and the imposition of colonial rule and Christian religion. Josh's research examines how Nahua kinship practices evolved across three centuries, and how Indigenous people used kinship to understand their precolonial past and colonial present. Josh is the co-editor, along with Camilla Townsend, of After the Broken Spears: The Aztecs in the Wake of Conquest, under contract with Oxford University Press for 2024. He is also the author of a new translation and study of the Codex Otlazpan and Tepexic, under contract with the Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies for 2025. At Rutgers, Josh was a founder and co-organizer of the joint Princeton-Rutgers Latin America and Caribbean Workshop and a co-organizer of the Nation and Empire Reading Group. He earned his B.A. in History and Classic Civilizations at Fordham University in 2019.

Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: Anthropology
Research Areas (themes, countries): therapeutic economy, healing, microbes, pharmaceuticals, body politics, Guatemala

Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: Spanish and Portuguese
Project: Contemporary urban and global transmissions of traditional narratives on Amazonian cosmovisions and collaborations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples
Research Areas (themes, countries): Amazonian Literature, Art and Culture, Latin American Indigenous Literature and Culture, Latin American Contemporary Public and Visual Culture, Environmental Humanities, Political Ecologies, Indigenous Studies, Public Humanities, Gender in Latin American Cinema
Dissertation Title: Resilience and Indigenous Cosmovisions: Humans and Nonhumans in Visual and Written Narratives from the Peruvian Amazon
Abstract of Dissertation Work: Indigenous peoples from the Peruvian Amazon are innovating how they communicate traditional narratives for building their social-ecological resilience and their alliances with global actors.

Laura Carolina De Moya-Guerra
Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: History
Research Areas (themes, countries): Latin American History; Global and Comparative
Bio: Laura is a PhD candidate in History at Rutgers University, specializing in the migrations, diasporas, and mobilities of 20th-century Latin America and the Caribbean. Her dissertation, 'The Chinese in Colombia: Immigration and Nation-Building in the 20th Century,' explores the Chinese immigrant experience and cultural identity in Colombia from 1903 to 1980, covering the period from the separation of Panama to Colombia’s recognition of One China. Previously, Laura's master's research focused on Arab migration to Barranquilla (Colombia) during the first half of the 20th century. Her research questions address immigration policy, xenophobia and exclusion, identity and representations, and immigrant socialization spaces. Laura holds a M.A. in History and a B.A. in Political Science from Universidad del Norte.

Laurian Rosa Rosa
Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: Geography
Research Areas (themes, countries): political ecology, privatization of beaches, environmental justice, Puerto Rico

Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: Geography
Research Areas (themes, countries): land system science, land-use change, political ecology, tropical forest, Mexico
Dissertation Title: The kaleidoscope of the Maya Forest – agricultural change, forest governance and vegetation dynamics in communities of the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico
Abstract of Dissertation Work: The current Mexican government has proposed a regional development plan in the Selva Maya that promotes multifunctional landscapes to address forest loss, climate change, and poverty alleviation through new forest governance arrangements. This development plan is composed of two synergistic projects, the first is the construction of the Mayan Touristic Train of 948 miles in length. The second is a public policy called Sembrando Vida, the most extensive reforestation program in the history of Mexico with a projection of 2 million hectares planted with timber and fruit trees. My research will focus on current frontier formations in the Maya Forest in Mexico as a case to expand on the recognition of how agrarian communities and forests relate and are co-constitutive. To do so, I will first characterize peasants' perspectives of the internal functioning of the ejido (agrarian communities under common management) and the values they assign to forests and Land. Second, I will analyze forest degradation using satellite images and pattern-based statistical models to generate future scenarios of forest degradation to 2025 and 2030. Finally, I will integrate peasants ' perspectives into the degradation analysis by discussing how these scenarios contrast with peasant imaginaries about future environmental and social change, producing what I have called "the kaleidoscope of the Maya Forest."
Bio: Leonardo Calzada holds a B.A. and M.S. degree in Biological Sciences from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (National Autonomous University of Mexico). He served as Deputy Director of Biosafety Communication at the National Council of Science and Technology in Mexico. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Geography at Rutgers University, where his dissertation focuses on understanding the impact of development frontier formation on agrarian transformation and landscape dynamics in tropical forests. His areas of interest include Land System Science, Political Ecology, and Data Science.
Publications: Google Scholar

Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: Geography

Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: MA
School : SAS
Department: Political Science (UNMA)

Campus: Camden
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : MGSA
Department: History

Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: Italian

Nathan Darmiento
Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: History
Research Areas (themes, countries): Latin American History, US
Bio: Nathan Darmiento is a third-year Ph.D. student at Rutgers University specializing in Latin American history, with a minor in U.S. history. He earned his B.A. in History and Latin American Studies from the University of Utah in 2022. His current research examines Mexico’s southern border in the state of Chiapas during the mid-twentieth century, focusing on development projects, national security concerns, and diplomatic relations between Mexico and Guatemala.

Nia Cambridge
Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: Geography
Research Areas (themes, countries): climate adaptation and resilience, environmental justice, political ecology, postcolonial thought, Caribbean region

Campus: NB
PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: Anthropology

Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: English

Sandra Acocal
Campus: NB
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PhD or MA: PhD
School : SAS
Department: History
Bio: Sandra Acocal is a fourth-year PhD student with a degree in Social Anthropology from the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (Mexico), Master in History and Ethnohistory from the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia (Mexico), and Doctor in History and Etnohistory from the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Sandra has studied the topic of death among the Nahua indigenous of central Mexico (anthropological approach) and the theme of the indigenous nobility, of central Mexico, in the 16th century. Her current interest in study is the documents written in the Nahuatl language in the 16th and 17th centuries in Tlaxcala (México).

Sherry Mason
Campus: NB
PhD or MA: MA
School : SAS
Department: Sociology
Institution: Rutgers School of Communication and Information
Department: Journalism and Media Studies
Research Interests: Trauma/ Popular Culture/ Socially Conscious Advertisements/ DEI/ Black and Latinx Studies/ Social Inequalities/ Cultural Studies/ Online Knowledge Production/ Sensemaking
Email Address: Click to Email
Degree: Phd
Background: Sherry Mason is a PhD student in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University, working toward a doctorate degree in Communication, Information, and Media with a concentration in Media Studies. Her current research takes a critical approach to examining the relationship between representations of historical trauma in mainstream entertainment media and online knowledge production of social and racial injustice. Prior to joining Rutgers University, Mason taught as a Full-time Lecturer of Sociology and Human Services with the Department of Sociology, Gerontology, and Substance Use at the University of Central Oklahoma as well as working in the nonprofit and government sectors.

People

Graduate Student Affiliate

Alana Rader

Alex Liebman

Anabelle Rodriguez

Caleb Delorme

Clio Bravo Idrobo

Clio Isaacson

Daniel Friedman

Daniela Mosquera Camacho

David Roldán Eugenio

Diana Iturralde Mantilla

Elvis Fuentes

Emma Oslé

Esperanza Santos

Federica Soddu

Florencia Elizabeth Bertinotti

Francisco Cantero Soriano

Henry Maquera

Isabel Guzzardo Tamargo

Jamie Gagliano

Javier González Cortés

Javiera Barrientos

Javiera Madrid-Salazar

Jeffrey Aizprua

Jennifer Natoli

José Torres

Joshua Anthony

Joyce Lu

Katia Yoza

Laura Carolina De Moya-Guerra

Laurian Rosa Rosa

Leonardo Calzada

Maria Garcia

Martin Pardo

Michael Van Stine

Natascia Cappa

Nathan Darmiento

Nia Cambridge

Raul Rodriguez Arancibia

Salvador Ayala Camarillo

Sandra Acocal

Sherry Mason

Tamara Velasquez Leiferman

Thayane Brêtas

Vania Villanueva

Zuleima Vazquez-Carrillo