Faculty
The Institute draws affiliated faculty from a wide range of colleges and departments across campus, including Anthropology, Business, Government, History, Philosophy, Spanish and Portuguese, Communications, Public Affairs, Natural Sciences, Art and Art History, and others.
School of Architecture
Sinclair J. Black
Master plan and design of Austin downtown streetscape innovations known as ''Great Streets,'' the highest current priority for the Downtown Alliance
Juan Miro
Mexican architecture
Community and Regional Planning
Bjorn Sletto
Political Ecology; Environmental Justice; Indigenous People; and participatory planning.
Patricia A. Wilson
Civic engagement; democratization; local governance; participatory policy-making
Blanton Museum of Art
Gabriel Perez-Barreiro
History of U.S. collections of Latin American art by the New York Graphic Workshop, 1965-1970
College of Communication
Department of Advertising
Isabella Cunningham
New technology and advertising; effectiveness of creative appeals; advertising and [br /]public service; international advertising
Department of Radio-Television-Film
Andrew Garrison
Documenting project row houses, in Houston, Texas, in the film THIRD WARD TX
Charles Ramirez-Berg
Mexican cinema
America Rodriguez
U.S.-Latino media
Joseph D. Straubhaar
International communication and cultural theory; the digital divide in the U.S. and other countries; comparative analysis of new technologies
Department of Journalism
Rosental Alves Calmon
International reporting; journalism in Latin America; Internet journalism
Donna DeCesare
Children affected by war and violence in Colombia; youth gangs in Central America [br /]and involving Central American immigrant youth in the U.S.
Mercedes Lynn de Uriarte
Comparative crisis coverage of Middle East and Central America; Latin American journalism
College of Fine Arts
Department of Art and Art History
Jacqueline Barnitz
Modern Latin American art; contemporary artists of the last thirty years
Steve Bourget
Archaeological project at Huace el Pueblo in the lower Valley to study the political and cultural development of the Moche north of the Pampa of Paijan
Andrea Giunta
Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art; Argentine Art; Latin American and [br /]European artistic relations; Latin American and United States artistic relations [br /][br /]
Julia Guernsey
Ancient Mesoamerica, particularly the Pacific coast and piedmont of Guatemala and Mexico; ongoing investigations into the sculptural manifestation of public and private ritual during the Formative period in Mesoamerica, particularly at the sites of La Blanca and Takalik Abaj in Guatemala and Izapa in Chiapas, Mexico
David Stuart
Archaeological research in Yucatan, Campeche, Quintana Roo, Chiapas, Tabasco, the Petan region in northern Guatemala, and Copan, Honduras
Department of Music
Lorenzo Candelaria
Sixteeenth-century music of Spain; mariachi music
Adam Holzman
Guitar; music of Mexico
Robin Moore
Cultural nationalism; socialist art aesthetics; music of the African diaspora; music and race relations
Joshua Tucker
Andean musics, popular musics of Latin America, mass media, public formation and public culture, race and ethnicity
Department of Theatre & Dance
Amarante Lucero
Theater and dance in Central America; intelligent lighting; cyberspace; virtual reality; El Barco Amarillo, translation to Spanish, 1997
College of Liberal Arts
Department of American Studies
Department of Anthropology
Jafari Sinclair Allen
Gender and sexuality in African diasporas; critical social theory; black feminisms; critical cultural studies; Cuba and the Caribbean; TBLGQ culture and political organizing
Joao Costa Vargas
Race, inequality, black genocide, urban space in the Americas; Brazil and the United States
Edmund T. Gordon
African American anthropology; economic anthropology; maritime anthropology; ethnicity and social stratification
Charles R. Hale
Race/ethnicity; identity politics; consciousness and resistance; activist anthropology; Latin America; Caribbean
Martha Menchaca
Mexican marriage law and its transition into U.S law during the nineteenth century
Enrique Rodriguez-Alegria
Colonial Mexico, especially sixteenth-century Mexico City and the Northern Basin of Mexico
Joel Sherzer
Study of fiestas in central Mexico; language and culture of the Kuna Indians of Panama
Christen A. Smith
Brazil; Performance; Race and racial formation; Violence; Black and indigenous struggles in Latin America; Theater; Social protest; Grassroots organizing
Shannon Speed
Local indigenous governance practices; human rights; gender in Chiapas, Mexico
Brian Stross
Mayan and Mixe-Zoquean languages; Maya epigraphy; anthropology of food; Mesoamerican ethnobotany
Fred Valdez, Jr.
Maya tombs in Belize; study of material culture; settlement patterns and small site studies
Samuel Wilson
Archaeology; ethnohistory; Caribbean and U.S. Southwest
Department of Economics
Harry M. Cleaver
Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico, and its circulation and ramifications, not only throughout Mexico, but in the world as a whole
William P. Glade
Cultural exchanges in NAFTA; Latin American economics; economic development; [br [br /]/]comparative systems; economics of the arts
Kim J. Ruhl
Latin America; free trade agreements; startup costs in exporting; long run movements [br /][br /]in aggregate productivity and international business cycles
Department of Geography & the Environment
Karl W. Butzer
Cultural ecology; applied geomorphology; geoarchaeology; colonial Mexico and Spain
Kelley Crews-Meyer
Remote sensing; geographic information science; land use/land cover change; human-[br /]environment interactions; environmental policy
William E. Doolittle
Transfer of water control technology from renaissance Spain to viceregal Mexico and its [br /]merger with native technology and diffusion
Robert A. Dull
Environmental history; land use history; prehistoric agriculture; climate change; natural [br /]hazards
Paul F. Hudson
Fluvial geomorphology; environmental change; quaternary studies
Gregory Knapp
Cultural and political ecology; adaptive dynamics; territoriality and politics of scale; mountains; sustainable development; water management
Francisco Perez
Alpine geomorphology; vegetation dynamics and biogeomorphology; ecological [br /]biogeography; pedogenesis and soil properties; mountain geoecology
Rodrigo Sierra
Land use/cover change and biodiversity conservation in mountain and lowland [br /]environments of the tropical Andean region; effects of ecological and biodiversity [br /]factors on land use decisions and the conservation potential of ecological and [br /]biodiversity units at various scales of aggregation, from local to regional; [br /]quantitative and spatial analysis (i.e., GIS and remote sensing) applications to [br /]environmental and conservation studies
Emily Skop
Population geography; migration; urban ethnic patterns
Kenneth Young
Biogeographical consequences of climate change; comparative ecosystems; landscape ecology; useful (and nuisance) plants and animals; wetlands and floodplains; ecology and conservation
Department of Government
Zoltan Barany
Role of military elites in the political and socioeconomic development of postcolonial states in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East
Daniel Brinks
Judicial response to police violence; judicial independence; democracy and the rule of [br /]law in Latin America
Henry A. Dietz
Metropolitan governance in large cities in Latin America; parties and party systems in Latin America; voting behavior
Kenneth Greene
Political parties; elections; voting behavior
John Higley
Breakdown of elite unity in Venezuela, its erosion in Colombia, but, conversely, increasing elite unity in Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Uruguay, as well as the ambiguous pattern displayed by Brazila's political elite; study also encompasses the continuing disunity of elites in Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and most countries of Central America south of Mexico
Juliet Hooker
Democratization processes in Latin America; indigenous and Afro-Latin politics; Central American politics; nationalism and social movements in Latin America
Wendy Hunter
Workers' Party in Brazil and its growth and transformation from 1989 until now
David Leal
Latino/Hispanic politics and policy
Raul Madrid
Determinants of social security reforms in Latin America; Latin American economic and [br /]social policy; political institutions
Kurt Weyland
Diffusion of innovations in Latin American pension and health reform
Department of History
Jonathan C. Brown
Cuban revolution; Mexican oil workers
Jorge Canizares-Esguerra
Early modern Atlantic history; history of science and colonialism; history of knowledge; colonial Spanish and British America
Susan Deans-Smith
Social and cultural history of Mexico and Andean region; Spanish imperialism; artists and artisans in Mexico; colonial studies
Seth Garfield
Social policies and cultural constructions of the Brazilian Amazon, 1940-1988
Virginia Garrard-Burnett
Religion and identity in Central American history; current religious movements in the ''Global South''; issues pertaining to gender and violence; history of the Rios Montt regime in Guatemala; spiritual capital in Latin America; new religious movements in Latin America
Frank Guridy
Transnational linkages between Afro-Cubans and African Americans in the making of racial understandings in the early twentieth century; education and U.S. empire building in the Caribbean and Latin America
John McKiernan-Gonzalez
Mexican American history; borderlands history; social and cultural history of medicine; Latino studies
Ann Twinam
Spanish empire (illegitimacy); race (circum-Caribbean)
Emilio Zamora
History of Mexican communities and their working class sector in the USA; relations between Mexicans across the international border; border and immigration studies; Latinos in hte USA
Department of Linguistics
Megan Crowhurst
Indigenous languages of Latin America: Guarayu (Tupi-Guarani, Bolivia), Nanti (Kampa, Peru) speech perception
Nora England
Documentation of Iquito, a language of the Peruvian Amazon linguistic description; descriptive syntax; comparative Mayan language and culture; bilingualism, language, and identity; language politics; language ideologies; Mayan linguistics; American languages; Mesoamerica
Patience Epps
Amazonian languages, particularly those of the Vaupés region (Nadahup/Maku and Tukanoan);language documentation and description; language contact and language history in South America,Amazonian verbal art.
Anthony Woodbury
Indigenous languages of Latin America, especially the indigenous languages of Oaxaca; Chatino historical linguistics, tonology, morphology, and syntax
Department of Philosophy
Ignacio A. Angelelli
Colonial philosophy in Latin America
Department of Sociology
Javier Auyero
Environmental Suffering, Collective Violence, Protest
Gloria Gonzalez-Lopez
Sexuality research with Mexican immigrants
Joseph Potter
Demography of the U.S.-Mexico border region; fertility and family planning in Latin America; medical sociology
Bryan Roberts
Development; modernization; macro-comparative and urban sociology; sociology of work
Andres Villarreal
Domestic violence in Mexico; poverty and female-headed households in Mexico; income inequality in Mexico; crime in Brazil
Department of Spanish & Portuguese
Niyi Afolabi
Afro-Brazilian Cultural Production
Arturo Arias
Maya culture; indigenous issues; contemporary Hispanic American fiction; Latin American critical theory; and cultural studies
Jossiana Arroyo Martinez
Analysis of global connections between Freemasons in the Spanish Caribbean and the United States from Earl Lewis's concept of ''overlapping diasporas'' and focusing on Masonic conceptualizations of the word as technology, and its representation of race, global capital, and alternative communities
Hector Dominguez-Ruvalcaba
Image of males in Mexican art, cinema, and literature (nineteenth and twentieth centuries); border violence
Enrique Fierro
Contemporary Spanish American poetry; theory of literature; comparative literature
Frederick G. Hensey
Spanish-Portuguese linguistics; comparative romance linguistics; translation studies; Catalan studies
Orlando Kelm
Hispanic linguistics; phonetics and phonology
Dale Koike
Linguistic identities in the border region; co-constructing meaning
Naomi Lindstrom
Spanish American narrative; Brazilian narrative
Lily Litvak
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Spanish literature; Latin American literature
Marta Luján
Linguistics; bilingualism; syntax; semantics
James Nicolopulos
Archives of the Arhoolie Foundation Frontera Collection for my project ''The Commercially Recorded Corrido in Texas (1946-1985): Primarily the Contributions of Falcon and Ideal, Texas Pioneer Mexican-American Owned Recording Compania''
Sonia Roncador
Brazilian, Portuguese, and Lusophone literatures; Spanish American literature; Latin American film and visual arts; feminist approaches in literature; cultural studies in Brazil; literary theory
Cesar Salgado
Contemporary Latin American and Caribbean literature; modernism from a comparative perspective
Nicolas Shumway
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Spanish American literature; comparative literature
Carlos A. Sole
Spanish historical and applied linguistics
College of Natural Sciences
Department of Biology
David Cannatella
Systematics and biodiversity of reptiles and amphibians (mainly frogs); Latin American organisms
Lawrence E. Gilbert
Rainforest structure and animal-plant interactions; insect population biology; basic ecology of pest organisms that affect overall biological diversity
Dean Hendrickson
Ecology and conservation of the spring ecosystems of CuatrocA-enegas, Coahuila, Mexico; distribution and evolution of blind catfishes of the genus Prietella of northwestern Mexico; collaborating on the description of a new catfish family from Chiapas, Mexico; project in development addressing evolution, ecology, and systematics of trout of the northern Sierra Madre Occidental of Durango, Sinaloa, Chihuahua, and Sonora, Mexico
James Mauseth
Evolution of morphogenic mechanisms and structure; evolution of columnar cacti; anatomy and development of parasitic flowering plants
Jose L. Panero
Distribution, diversity, and evolution of flowering plants; documentation of the floristic diversity of the southwestern United States and Mexico; vascular plant flora of the states of Durango and Oaxaca
Eric R. Pianka
Desert lizards
Michael Ryan
Behavioral evolution in frogs; sexual selection and communication in frogs and fish
Beryl B. Simpson
Evolution and diversification of Andean and southern South American flora; phylogeny and biogeography of various angiosperm groups; relationships between native solitary bees and their New World hosts; plants of the deserts of Mexico, Andean and desert regions of South America, especially Peru, Chile, and Argentina
Department of Geophysics
James Austin
High-resolution seismic profiling and coring of Lago Fagnano, Tierra del Fuego (Argentina) to decipher the geologic record of lake basins and contained sediments; use of this neotectonic and stratigraphic record to understand both the recent structural evolution of the Patagonian orocline and the history of oscillations of Southern Hemisphere westerly winds
Ian Dalziel
Antartic tectonic evolution
Brian K. Horton
Sedimentary geology in modern and ancient basins; geologic field mapping, facies analysis; provenance studies; quantitative basin modeling; thermochronology; and magnetic polarity stratigraphy
Law School
Hans Baade
International law
Karen Engle
Employment discrimination; public international law and international human rights; third world and feminist approaches to international law and human rights and the uses of culture
Patricia I. Hansen
General third world; indigenous region of Chiapas, Mexico
Alvaro Santos
Law and economic development programs; international trade law; labor law and relations; Latin American legal institutions
Gerald Torres
Race relations; indigenous issues in U.S. and Latin America; comparative indigenous issues relating to land; sovereignty and culture
Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs
Leigh B. Boske
Transportation policy regulation; microeconomics; benefit-cost analysis
David Eaton
U.S.-Mexico environmental cooperation; new methods for evaluation of air pollution emissions
Kenneth Flamm
Economic analysis of the defense industrial base; international competition in semiconductors, computers, and telecommunications; economic analysis of RandD, technology, and technology policy
Victoria Rodriguez
Decentralization; state and local government; opposition governments; women in contemporary politics
Chandler Stolp
Social policy evaluation and economic integration in the Americas
Peter Ward
Latin American urbanization; contemporary Mexican politics; housing policy and planning; Mexico City; colonia-type housing in the United States
David Warner
Health systems in U.S. and Mexico; portability of Medicare to Mexico; border health; the uninsured in the U.S.; working with Brazilian scholars to examine role of private sector in U.S., Mexico, and Brazil
Robert H. Wilson
Brazilian public policy; urban and regional economic policy; local governance in developing countries
Red McCombs School of Business
Accounting
David Platt
International value creation values and cost management
Finance
Michael Brandl
Economic development and financial market behavior in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and [br /]Bolivia
Stephen P. Magee
Economic and political determinants of tariffs and other trade barriers; economies of intellectual property and industrial organization; positive and negative effects of illegal systems on national economies; bioeconomics and international finance
Marketing
Kate Gillespie
International business; marketing strategy; business in developing countries
Kate Mackie
Sustainable economic development in Latin America
Bureau of Business Research
Elsie Echeverri-Carroll
Income inequalities in high-tech regions; how Austin succeeded in cloning the Silicon Valley; a comparative study of female entrepreneurs in the Americas