The Latino Studies Research Initiative

Five years ago Professors Lilia Fernandez and Aldo Lauria Santiago organized various loose-end, ad hoc efforts related to Latino Studies research at Rutgers into the LSRI effort.  LSRI helped fund multiple faculty and graduate student fellowship competitions and held multiple research symposia.  We assembled a working group of about 50 faculty and graduate students from across Rutgers' many campuses and schools.  The LSRI has served as an umbrella for multiple and diverse faculty projects including oral history work, historical blogs and documenting the history of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at Rutgers and in New Jersey.  More recently the LSRI is sponsoring an edited collection of essays on Latinos in New Jersey, co edited by Aldo Lauria Santiago and Ulla Berg (Rutgers University Press).  The New Jersey Historical Commission has funded the creation of a multimedia, public humanities website that will accompany this book.

As part of its effort to bridge North and South the CLAS will help support and make these initiatives visible with the Rutgers and New Jersey communities.