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About the Faculty and Staff of the Latin American and Iberian Institute

The Latin American and Iberian Institute (LAII) is the hub for UNM's interdisciplinary programs in Latin American Studies and provides university-wide support for Latin American and Iberian activities in all of UNM's eleven schools and colleges. (Browse Faculty)

UNM's LAII works closely with its former US Department of Education Title VI regional studies center consortium partner, the Center for Latin America and Border Studies (CLABS) at NMSU.

[Note to Faculty and Staff: Please add or update your information by going to LAII's survey form.]

UNM Latin America Concilium Faculty:

American Studies:

• Gabriel Melendez, Professor: Ph.D., University of New Mexico. Ethnic and cultural representations in film, autobiography, ethnopoetics, and enthnocritical theory. Email
• Rebecca Schreiber, Assistant Professor: Ph.D., Yale. Visual culture, 20th-century US-Mexico cultural and political relations, and transnational American Studies. Email

Anthropology

• Les Field, Associate Professor: Ph.D., Duke University. Cultural anthropology, indigenous peoples and nation states, indigenous cultural change and resistance, development in anthropology, regional emphasis-Central America and Andean South America. Email
• Hillard Kaplan, Professor : Ph.D., University of Utah. Human evolutionary ecology, population demography, theories of completed family size and fertility reduction in developed and developing world, reproduction and parenting among men (Hispanic and Anglo). Email
• Carole Nagengast, Professor and Chair : Ph.D., University of California,Irvine. Class, ethnicity, and gender, nationalism, the state, human rights,political economy, practical anthropology, rural socieities (east central Europe, Mexico, US-Mexico border region). Email
• Suzanne Oakdale, Associate Professor : Ph.D. University of Chicago. Ritual and politics, social organization, symbolic systems, personhood and agency, indigenous Amazonian peoples,Brazil. Email
• Keith Prufer. Email
• Sylvia Rodríguez, Associate Professor : Ph.D., Stanford University. Comparative ethnic relations, urbanization of small communities, religion in US Southwest, Mesoamerica. Email
• Karl H. Schwerin, Emeritus : Ph.D., Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles. Culture change, social organization, cultural ecology, agricultural origins and practises, ethnohistory, the history of anthropology, and botany. Email
• Beverly Singer, Associate Professor : Ph.D., Univ. of NM. Native American film and video history; indigenous cultural identity; and issues of self-representation in American life and culture. Email
• Anne Stone, Assistant Professor : Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University. Anthropological genetics. Email

Architecture: Community & RegionalPlanning

• Tim Castillo, Assistant Professor: M.Arch., Columbia University. Email
• Teresa Córdova Associate Professor : Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley. Urban focus, community development, housing, grassroots economic development (Mexico, US border). Email
• William Fleming Associate Professor : Ph.D., Civil Engineering, University of British Columbia. Natural resources planning, watershed management and impact assessment (Ecuador). Email
• David S. Henkel, Associate Professor : Ph.D., Cornell. Community-based natural resources monitoring; participatory planning; agriculture. Email
• Claudia B. Isaac, Associate Professor : MPA/URP (Woodrow Wilson School), Princeton University, Ph.D., (Urban and Regional Planning), UCLA. International development planning, community based planning, planning theory, gender and economic development, identity politics. Email

Art History/Media Arts

• Ray Hérnandez Duran Assistant Professor : Ph.D., University of Chicago. Ibero-American Colonial Arts and Architecture: Caribbean, New Spain, Peru, and Philippines. Email
• Holly Barnet Sánchez, Associate Professor : Ph.D., University of California. Pre-Columbian art, Frida Kahlo, Mexican muralism, Latin American art history. Email
• Flora Clancy, Professor Emeritus : Ph.D., Yale University. Pre-Columbian art and architecture, art of Mata Ortiz, Maya. Email
• David Craven, Professor : Ph.D., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Modern Latin American Art and Critical Theory, Nicaragua, Mexico, Cuba. Email
• Susan Dever, Associate Professor : Ph.D., Stanford University. Mexican Cinema and Literature; Latin American Cinema and Literature; links between art and political worlds. Email
• Jennifer von Schwerin Assistant Professor : Ph.D., Columbia University. Pre-Columbian art and architecture. Email

Biology

• James Brown, Distinguished Professor : Ph.D., University of Michigan. Ecology, biogeography, biological scaling, contrasts in global change between North and South America. Email
• William Pockman, Associate Professor: Ph.D., University of Utah. Whole plant physiological ecology of desert vegetation; ecological implications of xylem cavitation and hydraulic conductance; evolution of drought tolerance characteristics; ecophysiological perspectives on plant competition and invasion; plant and community response to climate change. Email
• Jorge Salazar-Bravo, Visiting Assistant Professor : Ph.D., The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Biology, systematics and ecology of small mammals from South America. Email
• Howard Snell Associate Professor : Ph.D., Colorado State University. Survival and protection of the ecosystem in the Galapagos Islands. Email
• Terry Yates Professor : Ph.D., Texas Tech University. National park system in Bolivia. Email

Communication and Journalism

• Miguel Gandert, Professor, also in American Studies: MA, University of New Mexico. Fine art and documentary photographer of the Spanish-speaking world of the southwest United States, Latin America as well as Spain. Email

Economics

• Melissa Binder, Associate Professor : Ph.D., Columbia University. Education, labor, gender, development, Mexico. Email
• Alok Bohara, Professor : Ph.D., University of Colorado. Econometrics, environmental econometrics, political economy. Email
• Don Coes, Professor and Associate Director of LAII for International Programs: Ph.D., Princeton University. Macroeconomics, International Economics, Brazil, macroeconomic adjustment to external shocks and appropriate exchange rate policy. Email
• Matias Fontenla, Assistant Professor : Ph.D., University of Texas, Austin: International finance, monatery economics, growth and development, financial intermediation. Area focus: Mexico.
• Richard Santos, Associate Professor and Chair : Ph.D., Michigan State University. Labor economics, health care economics, Hispanic employment. Email

Education

• Rebecca Blum-Martínez, Associate Professor : Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley. Bilingualism, second language acquisition, and literacy for marginalized populations. Email
• Allison Borden, Assistant Professor: Ed.D., Harvard. School leadership in the United States and in developing countries with an emphasis on Latin America and on quantitative research methods. Email
• Sylvia Celedón-Pattichis, Assistant Professor : Ph.D., in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Texas at Austin. Cultural and linguistic influences on the teaching and learning of mathematics. Email
• Ruth Trinidad Galván, Assistant Professor : Ph.D., University of Utah, Salt Lake. Anthropology of education, Multilingual/Multicultural Education, Third World Women & Cultural Studies, Globalization and Transmigration - (Im)migrant education, Ethnographic & Qualitative Research. Feminist pedagogy. Email
• Lois Meyer, Associate Professor : Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles. Second language acquisition; Bilingual education; ESL; Curriculum Development for Linguistic and Cultural Diversity. Email

Electrical and Computer Engineering

• Ramiro Jordán, Associate Professor : Ph.D., Kansas State University. Information Technology and Communications. Email

English

• Susan Romano, Associate Professor and Director of Rhetoric and Writing: Ph.D., University of Texas, Austin. Gender and ethnicity in electronic environments, feminist pedagogy, rhetoric and writing instruction in colonial and contemporary Mexico and in the southwest borderlands. Email

History

• Judy Bieber, Associate Professor : Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University. Brazil and Latin America colonial and national periods, Africa and African diaspora, slavery and plantation societies, family history. Email
• Manuel Garcia y Griego, Associate Professor: Ph.D., University of California (Los Angeles.) 20th-century Mexican history, 20th-century US political history. Email
• Kimberly Gauderman, Associate Professor : Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles. Colonial Latin America, modern Latin America, comparative women's history, cultural theory. Email
• Linda Hall, Professor : Ph.D., Columbia University. Contemporary Mexico, Mexican revolution, women in Latin America. Email
• Elizabeth Hutchison, Associate Professor : Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley. Modern Latin America, women's history, labor history. Email
• Cynthia Radding, Professor: Ph.D., UCSD. Ethnohistory of Northwest Mexico, enviornmental history, and ecology and cultural persistence in northwest Mexico and Eastern Bolivia during the transition from colonial to national rule. Email
• Barbara Reyes, Assistant Professor : Ph.D., UCSD. Email
• Enrique Sanabria, Assistant Professor : Ph.D., University of California, San Diego. History of Iberian and Atlantic World. Email
• Samuel Truett, Assistant Professor : Ph.D., Yale University. US West and Mexico, US-Mexico Borderlands, Environmental History, Transnational History Email

Health

• Dale Alverson, Regents Professor, School of Medicine, UNM and Medical Director, Center for Telehealth: M.D. University of Michigan, Neonatology, telemedicine. Email

Honors Program

• Celia López-Chávez, Associate Professor : Ph.D., Universidad de Sevilla(Spain). Latin American History, Colonial Latin America, social and economic history of the Catholic Church in Latin America. Email

Iberian Studies

• Alejandra Balestra, Assistant Professor: Spanish & Portuguese Department. Email
• Anthony Cardenas, Professor, Spanish and Portuguese: Ph.D., University of Wisconsin - Madison. Medieval literature, with strong research interests in the Golden Age; Cervantes; 17th-century New Mexican texts. Email
• Manuel Hermenegildo, Professor, Prince of Asturias Endowed Chair in Information Science and Technology: Ph.D., University of Texas, Austin. Electrical and Computer Engineering. Advanced Program Development, Global Program Analysis, Optimization / Verification, Abstract Interpretation, Abstract Machines, Parallelizing Compilers and more. Email
• Celia López-Chávez, Associate Professor: Ph.D., Universidad de Sevilla (Spain). Latin American History, Colonial Latin America, social and economic history of the Catholic Church in Latin America. Email
• Susana Rivera, Professor: Spanish and Portuguese. Email
• Ilia Rodríguez, Assistant Professor: Communication and Journalism. Email
• Enrique Sanabria, Assistant Professor: Ph.D., University of California, San Diego. History of Iberian and Atlantic World. Email
• Eleuterio Santiago-Díaz, Assistant Professor: Spanish and Portuguese. Email
• Lawrence Straus, Professor, Anthropology: Ph.D., University of Chicago. Old world prehistory/paleoanthropology; Middle and Upper Paleolithic, Mesolithic & Early Neolithic adaptations, Upper Pleistocene & Early Holocene environments; chrnology, technologies and faunas; research methods; cavearcheology. Email

Law

• José L. Martínez, Associate Professor: J.D., University of California, Berkeley. Email
• Margaret Montoya Professor: J.D., Harvard Law School. Race, ethnicity, gender and language, cross-cultural legal discourse, and cross-disciplinary problem solving. Email.
• Jennifer Moore, Assistant Professor : J.D. Harvard Law School: International humanitarian law, refugee law. Email
• Sergio Pareja, Professor: J.D., Georgetown University Law Center. Estate and gift taxation, with a focus on tax simplification and equity, as well as taxation issues related to environmental cleanup. Email
• Antoinette Sedillo López, Professor of Law & Director, Clinical Law Program: Ph.D., University of California - Los Angeles. Latino history and law in the US; family, indigenous and women's law; US-Mexico border. Email

Library

• Russ Davidson, Professor: Ph.D., Vanderbilt University. Latin American bibliography and librarianship, and specifically, in the techniques and methodology of planning and assembling specialized Latin American and Iberian research collections. Email
• Mina Jane Grothey, Associate Professor : M.A., Duke University. Interdisciplinary research on women in Latin America. Email
• Sharon Moynahan, Associate Professor : M.A., Lat. Am. St., U of Florida; M.S. Lib. Sci., Fla. St. U. Cataloging of Latin American materials, databases of images. Email
• Christine Mueller, Associate Professor : Latin America technical library services. Email
• Nina Stephenson, Associate Professor : M.L.I.S., Library and Information Studies, University of California at Berkeley. Art and photography. Email
• Elizabeth Steinhagen, Associate Professor : M.A., West Virginia University; M.A., University of Wisconsin, Madison. Email

Linguistics

• Melissa Axelrod, Associate Professor: Ph.D., University of Colorado - Boulder. Native American languages, morphosyntax, semantics, morphology, sociolinguistics. Email
• Catherine Travis, Assistant Professor : Ph.D., University of Melbourne. Spanish pragmatics, discourse analysis, and semantics. Email
Please see Spanish, Portuguese

Management/Business Administration

• Dante Digregorio, Instructor : Ph.D., U of Maryland. Strategic management, international management, and entrepreneurship. Email
• Raul de Gouvea Neto, Associate Professor: Ph.D., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. International trade and business; e-commerce; digital education; business issues in the Amazon region. Email
• Avraham Shama, Professor : Marketing, Information & Decision Science. Email
• Doug Thomas, Assistant Professor: Ph.D., Texas A & M University,: Strategic management, international business in Latin America. Email

Medicine

• Celia Iriart, Assistant Professor: Ph.D., University of Campinas, Brazil. Social medicine in Latin America, comparative international health systems, family medicine. Email
• Howard Waitzkin, Professor : Ph.D., Sociology, Harvard University. Public health, health policy, Latin American social medicine, primary care. Email
• Nina Wallerstein, Associate Professor : Ph.D., School of Public Health/Health Education, University of California Berkeley. Email

Music

• Steve Loza, Professor, Director, Arts of the Americas Institute: Ph.D., Music, University of California, Los Angeles. Ethnomusicology, Latin music, musical cultures in Latin America, Mexican-American music. Email
• Jorge Pérez-Gómez, Professor : MM Northwestern, DMA Eastman School of Music. The music of Silvestre Revueltas. Email

Nursing

• Cindy Mendelson, Assistant Professor: Ph.D., University of Arizona. Health promotion, community health nursing, and qualitative research methods. Email

Philosophy

• Andrew Burgess, Professor: Ph.D., Yale. Philosophy of religion and modern Christian thought, Kierkegaard. Email

Physics

• V.M. Kenkre, Professor: Ph.D., SUNY at Stonybrook. Statistical physics; nonlinear science; mathematical biology and theory of the spread of epidemics; quantum transport and tunneling phenomena; Bose-Einstein condensation; materials theory. Email

Political Science

• Fred Harris, Professor : J.D., U. of Oklahoma, 1954. US Politics (former US Senator), US-Mexico relations, US policy in Latin America. Email
• Kathryn A. Hochstetler, Professor: Ph.D., University of Minnesota. Civil society, social movements, presidentialism, Mercosur, environmental politics, UN conferences. Email
• Mark Peceny, Professor and Department Chairman: Ph.D., Stanford University. Email
• Christine Sierra, Associate Professor : Ph.D., Stanford University. International migration and refugees. Email
• William Stanley, Professor: Ph.D., Massachusettes Institute of Technology. Political violence by states, military politics, police and judicial reform, and peacekeeping and democracy promotion in cases of internal conflict. Email

Portuguese

• Leila Lehnen, Assistant Professor : Ph.D. Vanderbilt University. Brazilian literature and culture. Email
• Margo Milleret, Associate Professor : Ph.D., University of Texas, Austin. Portuguese, Spanish, Latin American theater. Email
• Jon M. Tolman, Professor Emeritus : Ph.D., UNM, Brazilian literature, poetry and prose; Brazilian cinema; Brazilian popular music. Email

Public Administration

• Mario Rivera, Professor : Ph.D., University of Notre Dame. Email
• Bruce Perlman, Professor : Ph.D., in Government, Claremont Graduate School. Email

Quiché Maya

• James Mondloch, Instructor : Ph.D., State University of New York at Albany. Quiche-Maya language and culture, Email

Quichua

• Naomi Schwartz, Teaching Fellow : M.A., University of Arizona. Culture and language change as reflected through traditional music and gender roles in Ecuador. Email

Religious Studies

• Richard Wood, Associate Professor : Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley. Political sociology and the sociology of religion (including liberationist and evangelical Christianity in Latin America), focusing on the institutional and cultural underpinnings of democratic life. Social movements in Mexico. Email

Sociology

• Robert Fiala, Associate Professor : Ph.D., Stanford University. Comparative development, social change. Email
• Phillip B. Gonzales, Professor: Ph.D., University of California - Berkeley. Race/ethnic/minority relations, political sociology, interactional sociology, social movements. Email
• Nancy López, Assistant Professor : Ph.D., Sociology, GSUC-City University of New York. Dominican Republic, Caribbean. Email
• Andrew Schrank, Assistant Professor: Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, Madison:Comparative sociology, labor, Latin America and the Caribbean.
• Susan Beth Tiano, Professor : Ph.D., Brown University. Gender and Development, how capitalism, neo-liberalism, industrial restructuring, and globalization affect gender roles. Email
• Nelson Valdes, Professor: Ph.D., University of New Mexico. Classical sociological theory, comparative/macrosociology, Latin America, race/ethnicity, rural sociology, urban sociology. Email
• Richard Wood, Associate Professor : Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley. Political sociology and the sociology of religion (including liberationist and evangelical Christianity in Latin America), focusing on the institutional and cultural underpinnings of democratic life.Social movements in Mexico. Email

Spanish

• Alejandra Balestra, Assistant Professor : Ph.D., University of Houston. Linguistics.
• Eleuterio Santiago Díaz Assistant Professor : Ph.D., Brown University. Central American literature, Black literature.
• María Dolores Gonzales, Assistant Professor and Coordinator, Spanish as a Heritage Language: Ph.D., University of New Mexico. Sociolinguistics of the southwest. Language maintenance and shift, language and gender, language attitudes. Language use in mediation and conflict resolution. Email
• Enrique LaMadrid, Professor : Ph.D., University of Southern California. Hispanic Folklore, Folk Music and Ethnopoetics, Chicano Literature. Email
• Kimberle López, Associate Professor : Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley. 19th and 20th Century Latin American Literature. Email
• Miguel López, Associate Professor : Ph.D.,University of California, Berkeley.Latin American Cultural Studies, Border Studies and Mexican and Chicano Narrative. Email
• Judy Maloof, Associate Professor . Contemporary Latin American narrative, especially women writers; testimonial literature, Latin American film Latin American Literature and Culture Email
• Kathryn McKnight, Associate Professor : Ph.D., Stanford University. Colonial Latin American Literature, Women Writers, Cultural Studies, Early-Modern nun-writers and their writings; the convent as intellectual community Afro-American narratives of self-representation found in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Church and administrative archives. Email
• Mary B. Quinn, Assistant Professor: Ph.D., University of California - Berkeley. 16th and 17th-century Spanish literature, especially the novel and Cervantes. Cultural and interdisciplinary studies, especially music. Email
• Tey Diana Rebolledo, Professor : Ph.D., University of Arizona. Latin American literature, poetry, narrative. Email
• Rena Tórres-Cacoullas, Associate Professor : Ph.D., The University of New Mexico. Email
• Neddy Vigil, Assistant Professor : Ph.D., University of New Mexico. Spanish Language, Portuguese historical linguistics and the early Iberian lyric. Email

Theater and Dance

• Dorothy Baca, Associate Professor: MFA, University of California - Los Angeles. Email
• Eva Encinias-Sandoval, Associate Professor . Private instruction in flamenco and classical Spanish dance and modern dance with well known experts. Email
• Jennifer Predock-Linnell, Professor : Ph.D., Educational Foundations, University of New Mexico. Dance techniques (modern & ballet), choreography, improvisation, dance pedagogy, oral histories of dance artists, and contemporary dance in Mexico. Email

Research Associates

• Meredith Paxton Visiting, Scholar, Ph.D. University of New Mexico. Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, Postclassic Maya (including codices), Hispanic and Spanish Colonial Art. Email