2021-22 IUPLR/UIC Mellon Fellows

Dr. Ricardo Gabriel is a Visiting Lecturer of Sociology at Trinity College. He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. His work focuses on radical Puerto Rican politics in the United States, anti-/decolonial education, and on movements for environmental and climate justice. Gabriel’s dissertation explores the role of counter-narratives and critical education in struggles for decolonization and social justice by examining the movement for Puerto Rican studies at The City University of New York during the 1960s and 1970s. The project is based on archival research and original oral histories with former students and scholars who helped establish Puerto Rican studies. Ricardo is continuing this work post-dissertation by studying current popular education efforts to advance Puerto Rico’s decolonization, as well as initiatives for Black and Latinx studies at the K-12 levels. His second line of research focuses on the connections between movements for environmental and climate justice in the northeastern region of the United States and the Caribbean. He has written for NACLA: Report on the Americas, and in 2019 he wrote the foreword for Caribbean Connections: Puerto Rico, 3rd Edition, an interdisciplinary curricular guide with readings and lessons on Puerto Rico and social justice for high school teachers, published by Teaching For Change.

As an educator, he seeks to create spaces of self-reflection and collaborative learning. His approach to teaching is based on critical and ethnic studies pedagogies that are culturally responsive, intersectional, and committed to community engagement. Prior to joining Trinity College, he taught at Fordham University and at The City University of New York.

Ricardo Gabriel’s mentor: Dr. Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz, Northwestern University

Dr. Amy Andrea Martinez earned her doctoral degree in Criminal Justice from the Criminal Justice Studies Department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York. Her research interests include Mexican/Chicano Gang Culture, Mass Incarceration, Third World & Indigenous Qualitative Research Methods, U.S. (Settler) Colonialism, Police Use of Lethal Force, and Prison/Police Abolition. As a first-generation, working-class, and system impacted Xicana from Southern California, her experiences inform her commitment to decolonial gang research on Mexican/Chicanx families and their associations and experiences with gang and street life.

Amy Andrea Martinez’s mentor: Dr. Marisa Salinas, Cal State University, San Marcos

Dr. Nathan Rossi is an Assistant Professor of Instruction in Screen Cultures at Northwestern University. He recently received his PhD in Media Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. His dissertation project considered the ways in which transnational/racial adoptees from Central America use documentary, social media, and digital technologies in the negotiation of cultural identity and to bring attention to untold histories of the Salvadoran and Guatemalan Civil Wars. His work can be found in Latino Studies, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, and Flow: A Forum on Culture and Media.

Nathan Rossi’s mentor: Dr. Ester Trujillo, DePaul University

Dr. Mauricio Patrón Rivera earned his Ph.D. in Spanish with a concentration in Creative Writing at the University of Houston (May 2022), with the dissertation Tener la escritura en las manos (To Have the Writing in the Hand). Now is the Subdirector of the National Center for the Professional Training and Leadership for Domestic Workers in Mexico City. Previously, he obtained an MFA at the Independent Studies Program at the Museum of Contemporary Art at Barcelona, and an MA in Human Rights at the Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City. His work includes a permanent collaboration with Domestic Workers. Mauricio does creative writing about/with domestic workers, including: the essay “Circadian Rhythm,” the short story “Prohibido ir de chopping,” and the testimonies Voices Spinning off the Orbit: Testimonials from Three Domestic Workers. His research includes “Nunca más un México sin nosotras. La voz de las trabajadoras del hogar en su lucha por la ratificación del Convenio 189 de la OIT” (Revista Metodhos, CDHDF, 2017) and “Hacia un cuerpo en la necropolítica” in Políticas, prácticas y pedagogías TRANS (UOC, 2015). Mauricio’s research and teaching interests focus on Spanish, journalism, history, creative writing, literary criticisms, and gender studies.

Mauricio Patrón Rivera’s mentor: Dr. Claudia Salazar Jiménez, California State Polytechnic University

Dr. Elizabeth Obregón is currently the Assistant Director of Undergraduate Research at the University of Chicago. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Illinois Chicago with a concentration in Latin American and Latino Studies. Her doctoral work critically explores the ways that ideas of biology and genetics shape race-making among Cubans on the island and Cuban Americans in the U.S. Her transnational and cross-generational scope considers the ways that biologized narratives of race continue to reinforce anti-Blackness in “colorblind” spaces and the ways that racialized identities and Cuban heritage work are shaped and reshaped across national borders including the role that genetic ancestry tests play in these processes among the U.S. diaspora. Her scholarly work can be found in Ethnic and Racial Studies (2021) and SAPIENS (2021). She was also a researcher for IUPLR (2017-18) where she co-edited Mapping Directions in Latino Research (2018).

Elizabeth Obregón’s mentor: Dr. Alejandro de la Fuente, Harvard University

Dr. Vicente Carrillo is an artist, scholar, and political educator. He received his Ph.D. in Chicana/o & Central American Studies, with an emphasis in Gender Studies, from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow with the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference at Emory University. Carrillo’s research traces the contestations that arise from gentrification and the queer racialized bodies at the core of these debates. His work provides a critical textual analysis of contemporary cultural works to understand the complex ways queerness is mobilized as a place-making strategy. Using an interdisciplinary approach, he works at the intersection of queer of color critique, performance studies, gentrification studies, and Chicane/Latine Studies. In 2021, Carrillo published “Pride Arrives to the Barrio: An Ethnographic Reflection on Boyle Height’s Orgullo Fest,” with Latinx Talk. Carrillo has an upcoming article “The Riddle: Queer Brown Intimacies in the Gentrifying Barrio” in Latino Studies. He has also received a number of fellowships including the Eugene V. Cota Robles Fellowship, the IUPLR/UIC Mellon Dissertation Fellowship, UCLA’s Graduate Research Mentorship Fellowship, and UCLA’s Gold Shield Alumnae Fellowship.

In 2023, Carrillo was a Lecturer at Smith College’s Latin American and Latina/o Studies Department. In 2022, they were a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign in Latina/Latino Studies. Outside of academia, Carrillo is a practicing painter.

Vicente Carillo’s mentor: Dr. Roy Perez, University of California San Diego