PhD Student Profiles

César Iván Alvarez-Ibarra

César is from the city of Monterrey. He received a bachelor’s degree in International Studies from the Universidad de Monterrey (UDEM) in 2016 and an MA in Latin American Studies from UT Austin in 2020. Both his college and MA degrees have focused on LGBTT+ resistances to LGBTT+ mainstream hegemony. From 2015 to 2016, César was able to collaborate with different organizations such as Fuerzas Unidas por Nuestros Desaparecidos en Nuevo León (FUNDENL) and CREDS (Centro de Representación y Diversidad Sexual). From 2016 to 2018, he worked as a high school teacher for the social sciences department at UDEM Unidad Fundadores High School. 

César is interested in the possibilities for cuir radical futurity-building via performance art, and LGBTT+/cuir rejection and dissidence to narratives of hegemonic LGBTT+ citizenship, respectability, and homonationalism.

Research Interests: Performance studies; art; maricón resistance; travesti dissidence; Ballroom scene; Monterrey; Nicaragua; homonationalism; filth; hygiene; hegemony; cuir anarcho-communism

Cindia Arango López

Cindia Arango López holds a bachelor's in History from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Medellín and a master's in Geography from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá with a specialization in environment and cartography at the University of Antioquia. She has focused her research on colonial history and contemporary human geography. She has also worked in the public sector in Colombia, such as the National Museum of Colombia, the Historical Memory Center, and the Ministry of Culture. From 2016 to 2021, she worked as an academic coordinator, professor, and researcher in Colombia's only undergraduate program in Desarrollo Territorial, offered by the University of Antioquia for the regions. In her first book, Geografías de la movilidad. Perspectivas desde Colombia (2016), she and co-author Luis Sánchez Ayala consider new routes to resignifying forced mobility and drawing alternative voluntary mobilities. Cindia has also published articles related to slavery in Colombia, historical cartography, and socio-environmental conflicts in Latin America.

Her doctoral research seeks to establish a connection between the Magdalena River and its navigators, the enslaved population, and mixed-race people ("mulatos") known as bogas in 18th-century Colombia (the New Kingdom of Granada). 

Research Interests: Environmental history; human geography; identity and race; slavery studies; transatlantic history; environment; and territorial studies.

Ana Carolina Assumpção

A journalist born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Ana Carolina received a bachelor’s in Social Communication in Rio de Janeiro and an MA in Latin American Studies from UT Austin in 2021. She has always been connected with social movements. Before moving to Austin in 2019, she was the curator and producer of a project that transformed a public-school patio into a graffiti art gallery. As the mother of young of a girl, she seeks social justice changes and works to reduce racial and gender inequalities. Her master's research focused on community collectives and Black women's organizations in Rio’s favelas and how they resist police brutality and state anti-blackness policies. She will continue her research in the LLILAS doctoral program, focusing on Black women as political subjects and their favelas organizations.

Research Interests: Territory; Black women; necropolitics; resistance politics; Rio de Janeiro; social movements

Ana Luiza Biazeto

Ana Luiza Biazeto has a bachelor's degree in Communication/Journalism and a master's degree in Social Work. She worked as a journalist on racial issues and, during her master's degree, researched the reality of women imprisoned for drug trafficking in a prison complex in São Paulo, Brazil, the city where she was born and raised. Since finishing her master's degree in 2010, she has worked as an educator, coordinator, and mediator of nonprofit socio-educational projects serving mostly Black youth, with the intention of having an impact on youth outside the prison system, helping to break the school-to-prison pipeline. As a next academic step, she intends to deepen and improve her thesis, to study mass incarceration of Black women in Brazil, and to investigate cases of adolescents living in youth centers. 

Research Interests: Mass incarceration; race; gender; intersectionality; youth; necropolitics

Denise Braz

Denise is from Minas Gerais, Brazil. She is a Black feminist, progressive, comunista, singer, and activist for human rights and nature. She completed her bachelor’s degree in literature in Brazil, where she was also a teacher. She lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, for seven years, where she pursued a master’s in social anthropology in the Department of Philosophy and Literature at the University of the Buenos Aires. Her thesis was titled "The Black Social Movement of the City of Buenos Aires: Practices and Claims.” In Buenos Aires, Denise investigated Black history from the stories and perspectives of the Black people themselves, while also considering her own experience in the double role of researcher and activist. She began her doctoral studies at the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, The University of Texas at Austin, in August 2020. Her work will focus on the struggles of Black mothers in defense of their lives and the lives of their families. 

Research Interests: Race; gender; intersectionality; decolonialism; Black social movements; Black feminism

Mary Elizabeth Cassio

Mary Elizabeth Cassio received a bachelor's degree in Hispanic Studies from Pacific Lutheran University and a master's degree in Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies from University of Wisconsin–Madison. During her time at the University of Wisconsin, she studied the Ecuadorian Kichwa language. She translated and interpreted four Kichwa poems for her master's thesis, "Llakichina and the Decolonial Subject in Four Kichwa Poems," and used a decolonial and post-structural approach to examine an Ecuadorian Kichwa aesthetic expression in these poems. She intends to continue working with Kichwa poetic literatures, and is interested in contemporary Kichwa poetry that explores binary identities.

Research Interests: Decoloniality; Ecuadorian Kichwa language and literatures; bilingual poetry; indigeneity and indigenous poetics

Jorge Choy Gómez

Jorge Choy Gómez is from a small town in southern Mexico called Tapachula. He completed a bachelor’s degree in social psychology and a master’s degree in social anthropology, both focused on Central American immigration in southern Mexico. He plans to continue with the subject of human mobility from Central America to Mexico and the United States, now focusing on the protection system for children and adolescents, a system that protects by arresting and imprisoning.

Research Interests: Human mobility from Central America to Mexico and the US; protection versus detention of children and adolescent migrants

Luísa Bridi Dacroce

Luísa Dacroce is broadly interested in experiences of ethnoracial identity navigation, contestation, and negotiation, as well as these processes' implications for panethnic solidarity and identity politics. Her work has explored how children of Brazilian immigrants navigate U.S. ethnoracial dynamics and negotiate their non-Hispanic Latinidad. She hopes to continue studying the experiences of the Brazilian diaspora in the United States, as well as how those experiences resemble or differ from those of their Hispanic counterparts. Similarly, she plans to explore the dynamics of contemporary Brazilian and Hispanic relations in this country.

Research Interests: Identity politics, intersectionality, intraethnic relations, Brazilian immigrants and diaspora in the U.S.

Mariana Escalona

Mariana Escalona was born and raised in La Habana, Cuba. She completed a bachelor’s degree in Sociology at the Universidad de La Habana and a master’s degree in Business Administration with a major in Human Resources in the University Ana G Méndez, Puerto Rico. She is mainly interested in gender, Black and transatlantic studies.

Research Interests: Gender, Black and transatlantic studies; History of empire, law and labor division in the Caribbean, colonialism and neocolonial practices

Alex Costa Kott

Alex Costa Kott holds a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Texas State University and a master’s degree from the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS) at the University of Texas at Austin. During his master’s program, Alex’s research looked at religious intolerance and Umbanda’s relationship with the environment. For his doctorate, Alex is investigating Umbanda’s place in broader discussions of racial dynamics in terreiros and Brazilian society. Alex’s interests are motivated by living in Goiânia, Brazil, and in the Brazilian diaspora in the U.S.

Research Interests: Africana religions, Umbanda, Bantu origins, Afro-Brazilian epistemologies, indigeneities, Eurocentrism, Popular Catholicism, spiritual ecology, religious music

Gustavo Fuchs Alvarado

Gustavo received a bachelor's degree in International Studies from the National University of Costa Rica (UNA), an MA in Media Studies from FLACSO Ecuador, and an LLM in International Law from the University of Nottingham. His studies have focused on media and human rights, including topics such as media ownership, agenda-setting, and hate speech. Since 2018 he has been investigating the intersection between media, religion, and politics, focusing on the evangelical movement in Costa Rica and its rise into mainstream politics after that year’s presidential elections. 

Research Interests: Media studies; evangelical movement; religious politics; far right; Central America agenda-setting; framing; democracy; human rights

Alexandra Lamiña

Alexandra Lamiña is an international PhD student from Ecuador. She is a geographer and holds an engineering degree in environmental studies. She completed her master’s degree in the Latin American Studies and Community and Regional Planning programs at The University of Texas at Austin. Alexandra has been working since 2010 with the Kichwa from the Ecuadorian Amazon to support processes of territoriality and political representation. Her main areas of involvement include social mobilization, community participation, participatory mapping, and ethnography. Currently, she investigates indigenous vis-à-vis modernist planning in the Ecuadorian Amazon, focusing on the challenge posed to modern planning by indigenous ontologies and the opportunities for forging new forms of planning that incorporates indigenous epistemologies.

Research Interests: Social mobilization; community participation; participatory mapping; ethnography; indigenous peoples and planning in the Ecuadorian Amazon

Luciana Barretto Lemos

Luciana Lemos holds a bachelor's degree in Law from Universidade Salvador–Unifacs in Salvador, Brazil, and a master's degree in Public Administration from the University of Pittsburgh, specializing in Urban Affairs and Planning. In her PhD program at LLILAS, her concentration is Community and Regional Planning. During her master's program, Luciana was a Fellow at the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. She also worked as a researcher at the Ford Institute for Human Security, where she investigated water governance and water affordability issues in the United States and Latin America, with a particular focus on Brazil. She is also a member of ONDAS – Observatório Nacional dos Direito à Água e ao Saneamento, an organization in Brazil that aims to ensure the implementation of the universal right to sanitation through public and democratic management. Her doctoral research revolves around water governance in the Amazon Region in Brazil, with a particular interest in understanding how Indigenous knowledge can inform decision-making and water resources planning processes. Her research has received support from the Tinker Foundation, the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS), and the LLILAS Brazil Center.

Beyond her academic pursuits, Luciana is a documentary filmmaker. She has directed four short documentaries, which received financial support from Banco Santander, the Federal Government of Brazil, and the Government of the State of Bahia. Her films have been showcased at several festivals worldwide, including the Berlin International Festival (Berlinale), Santa Maria da Feira Festival in Portugal, Gramado Film Festival, and New York Film Festival. Currently, she is developing the Fluxo Sagrado series for Canal Futura in Brazil.

Research Interests: Water planning, water governance, social equity, and community engagement

Paula Lezama

Paula Lezama, holds a BA in Economics from her home country, Colombia, and an MA degree in Latin American and Caribbean Studies from the Institute for the Study of Latin America and the Caribbean at the University of South Florida, where she worked for over 10 years and is part of their Afro-descendants Working Group. She is interested in a wide range of topics related to racial disparities in Colombia and Brazil, including the multidimensional poverty measures for Afro-descendants and the impact of armed conflict and violence.

Research Interests: Historical, discursive, and material connection between Blackness, poverty and Homo economicus; historical specificities of poverty in Latin America; the Western Hemisphere; global poverty as a distinctly "colored" phenomenon

Ana López Hurtado

Ana López Hurtado (she/they) is a Colombian poet and researcher. She holds a master’s degree in European, Latin American, and Comparative Literatures and Cultures from The University of Cambridge; a graduate certificate in Epistemologies of the South from The Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO); and a BA in Literary Studies from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá. Her doctoral research focuses on the affective and emotional dimensions of paid domestic work in Colombia from a decolonial feminist perspective.

Ana's first poetry book, Aquí donde tiemblo, was published in 2021 by Sincronía Casa Editorial. She is also part of Como la Flor, an anthology of Colombian cuir (queer) contemporary poetry published by Editorial Planeta; and Cielo Desnudo, a digital compilation of contemporary Latin American poetry. Her work appears in publications such as Río Grande Review, Círculo de poesía, El Hipogrifo, and Portal magazine, among others.

Research Interests: Theories of Affect and Emotion; Care Studies; Care Economies; Reproductive Labor; Paid Domestic Work in Colombia and Latin America; Sociology of Work and Employment in Colombia and Latin America; Sociology of Emotions; Decolonial Theories and Methodologies; Decolonial Feminisms; Global South Epistemologies; Gender Studies; Feminist Geographies; Critical Race and Ethnicity Studies; Buddhist Epistemologies; Oral Histories

Pablo Millalen Lepin

Pablo Millalen Lepin is from the Mapuche community of Maniuco, Commune of Galvarino, southern Chile. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Social Work and a master’s in Management and Public Policy from the University of Santiago de Chile. He is interested in the study of state programs and policies regarding Indigenous peoples in Chile and Latin America, with a particular focus on the relationships between the Chilean State and the Mapuche people. He was a fellow at the Human Rights Program for Indigenous Peoples of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the University of Deusto (2016); he also studied at the International People's College in Denmark. He is a member of the indigenous research collective Comunidad de Historia Mapuche, which is based in Temuco, Chile.

Research Interests: State policies and Indigenous peoples; the Chilean state and the Mapuche people; Indigenous politics; neoliberalism, multiculturalism, and public policies; indigenous rights, human rights, and international relations 

Imelda Muñoz

Imelda Muñoz is born and raised in Salinas, California, and is the daughter of Mexican immigrant parents. She holds an MA in Ethnic Studies from San Francisco State University and received a BA in Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies from California State University Monterey Bay. Her doctoral research focuses on the life experiences of queer and transgender Mexican immigrants who work in the agricultural industry in central California. Using an ethnographic approach, Muñoz examines the social lives of queer and transgender Mexican immigrants within multiple contexts: (1) the agricultural industry, both in the fields and produce-packing factories; (2) the rural communities of the Salinas Valley; and, (3) their family and kinship ties.

Research interests: Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies; Women and Gender Studies; Sexuality Studies; Ethnic Studies; Migration Studies; Third World Feminism

Katherin Patricia Tairo-Quispe

Katherin Tairo is a Quechua scholar and activist who was born and grew up in Sicuani, a small town of Cusco in the south of Peru. She holds a master's degree in Social Management from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, a master's degree in Social Business Management for Social Innovation and Local Development from Universidad EAFIT Colombia, and a bachelor's degree in Social Communication from Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco.

Aside from her PhD, she is currently running socially engaged projects in the Peruvian Andes (Cusco and Apurimac regions) with Quechua communities and the support of local governments, and the United States Embassy in Peru. Her experience (which she calls “adventures”) as a researcher and consultant for nonprofit organizations motivate her to explore “development” from an indigenous approach. Particularly, the role of indigenous policies in “developmental” programs and projects in Peru and Latin America, with emphasis on those that are being implemented in indigenous communities.

Research Interests: Indigenous studies; decolonizing methodologies; indigenous politics; development from an indigenous approach; aesthetics; Quechua media activism; gender studies

Juan Tiney Chirix

Juan is a Tzutujil-Kakchiquel Mayan non-binary student who grew up in a country called Guatemala. Before starting their doctoral studies at UT Austin, Juan received a bachelor’s degree in economics at the University of Havana and dual master’s degree in Latin American Studies / Community and Regional Planning, which expanded their knowledge of the officially recognized Indigenous literature in academia, both in Latin America and in the United States. The struggle for recognition and respect for Indigenous nations is a family legacy. Juan has also been involved in reclaiming academic spaces for the recognition of Indigenous knowledge, especially the indigenous economy and politics. Juan’s master’s thesis, titled “El cooperativismo como espacio político y económico para el empoderamiento de las mujeres negras e indígenas: diálogos intersectoriales sur-sur (La República Dominicana y Guatemala),” centered on the recognition of the knowledge of women of color, especially Indigenous and Black women, in microprojects of permaculture; however, Juan analyzes research methodologies and positionality as a non-binary Indigenous researcher.

Research Interests: Indigenous studies in Guatemala; critical race and gender theory; political economics; cooperativism and neoliberalism; decolonization of planning; participatory methodology