Current Graduate Students

Cristal Alba

Email: cgalba@ucsd.edu 

Education: University of California, Los Angeles, BA Chicana/Chicano Studies

Research Interests: Pornography and queer Latinx identity.  

Sara Almalla

Email: salmalla@ucsd.edu 

Josh Bender

Email: j2bender@ucsd.edu

Education: BA English and American Literature, NYU; MA Southeast Asian Studies, U of Washington  

Research Interests: Literature and Filipinx folk cultures

Antonio Catrileo

Email: acatrileo@ucsd.edu

Education: Pontifica Universidad Católica de Valparaiso, BA and MA

Research:  Mapuche Two-Spirit communities and histories

Adriana Echeverria

Email:aechever@ucsd.edu

Burgundy Fletcher

Email: bjfletch@ucsd.edu

Andrea Gaspar

Email: adgaspar@ucsd.edu

Education: BA University of California, Irvine

Research Interests: I am interested in looking at how they generate community power and accountability through storytelling, healing intergenerational trauma, and by establishing formal and informal networks of political education.

Research:  In my project, I aim to compare the connections and differences on how Mixteco, Payómkawichum, and Kumiai people resist under a colonial, heteronormative, militant, capitalistic, and anti-Black regime. 

Gregory Seiichi Pōmaikaʻi (Pōmaikaʻi) Gushiken

Email: ggushike@ucsd.edu

Education:  BA in English and Political Science, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, 2018

Research Interests: Settler Colonialism and Militarism in the Pacific, Gender & Sexuality, the Environmental Humanities, Climate Justice, Pacific Studies, Indigenous Politics, the Hawaiian sovereignty movement, Aloha ʻĀina, Hawaiian Diaspora, Queer Indigenous Studies, Community-based Participatory Research, contemporary Hawaiian literature, Hawaiian Language archives, and oral history.

Oscar Gutierrez

Email: ogutierr@ucsd.edu

Education: 
B.A. in Journalism and Race and Resistance Studies, San Francisco State University (2017)

Tirrezz Hudson

Email: thudson@ucsd.edu

Education: North Carolina State University, BA

Research: Black masculinities and sexualities; Black spiritualities

Cheron Laughing

Email: claughin@ucsd.edu

Education: BA Dartmouth College; MA University of Arizona

Research Interests: Recruiting and supporting students of color, low income, and DACA students to participate in study abroad programs that center around activities that highlight the legacies of American imperialism, and interact with local communities to think about bridging decolonization processes in distinctive sites impacted by US empire. As well as Native Higher Education, Native Gender Studies, Land Based Pedagogies & Indigenous Food Sovereignty, Native Media & Pop Culture   

Which course, assignment or research opportunity has been your most remarkable, thus far, as an Ethnic Studies doctoral student?  

Indigenous Epistemologies and Their Disruptions with Dr. Jolivette

Which course, assignment or research opportunity has been your most remarkable, thus far, as an Ethnic Studies doctoral student? 

Decolonizing Methodologies with Dr. Ambo

What has been your proudest accomplishment (so far) as an Ethnic Studies doctoral student?

Passing my qualifying exams and promoting to Candidacy all the while being heavily involved in the Native campus community. 

How do you look forward to impacting the field of Ethnic Studies? 

Challenging the field and folks in it to be cognizant of their relationship and responsibility to Native nations and communities.

Radhika Marwaha

Email: rmarwaha@ucsd.edu

Education: BS Global Disease Biology, UC Davis 

Research Interests: Caste, extractive industries, petro-culture, Critical Caste Studies, Black-Indigenous-Dalit Relations/Orientation to Ecologies and Environmental Futurisms, Sikh & Panjabi Studies, queer of color critique, and Transnationalism.

Which course, assignment or research opportunity has been your most remarkable, thus far, as an Ethnic Studies doctoral student?  

In the summer after my second-year, I was blessed to be a part of SIDAK, the Sikh Research Institute’s Leadership Program that is focused on inculcating a Gurmat-centered lens not only towards Sikh and Panjabi histories and futures, but also in broader social justice struggles we find ourselves up against: environmental destruction, capitalist extraction, and our long-drawn fights against white supremacy, brahmanism, and cis-heteropatriarchy. Building on my training as Ethnic Studies scholar, I was able to be expansive in interpreting the Gurmat framework that brings together Baani (the Infinite Wisdom or Sabad Guru), Tavarikh (History), and Rahit (Lifestyle), in thinking through visions of organizing work, building new worlds and ethical relationships of solidarity, that fall in line with my own connection to the Divine. Meditating on the Asa Ki Var (“Ballad of Hope”) composition within the Guru Granth Sahibji with caring and nurturing peers and teachers was extremely transformative because it coalesced so well with ruminations and tensions that have been at the core of my Ethnic Studies journey – including the kind of heartbreak and burnout that can come with constantly engaging with the gravity of violences.

Which course, assignment or research opportunity has been your most remarkable, thus far, as an Ethnic Studies doctoral student? 

In my second year, I took Professor Boatema Boateng’s course, “COGR 275: Creating to Think” built on the premise that “art is epistemological” and that our creative practices should open up generative pathways to engage with the scholarship in our fields to answer the questions we have been grappling with. This course felt extremely challenging to me at the onset because I felt like I had no sustained creative practice and for the past decade or so had only been intellectualizing the work I was doing, or even when I was forced to be creative, I simply was producing a collage or a website without thinking with art. Texts we learned from such as Erica Hunt and Dawn Lundy Martin’s ‘Letters to the Future: Black Women/Radical Writing’, as well as the evocative and inspiring work of my peers helped me reconnect with fiction in and beyond ways that I was familiar with. I ended up experimenting with fiction writing as a way to think about the ‘speculative’ and the environment’ across time and space. This of course required me not just to research a ton, but to carve out time and space for me to hear and scribble together a story.

What has been your proudest accomplishment (so far) as an Ethnic Studies doctoral student?

I think my biggest accomplishments have been the relationships I have built during my time in this program – whether at UCSD, or outside. My friends and mentors have and continue to be instrumental in making the transition to a new geography and field so enriching. Further, being connected to the institution/North American academia as an oppressor-caste student has helped me work on projects to promote cultural interrogation, unlearning hegemony, and diversifying spaces of intellectual and artistic production in South Asian diasporic communities, in ways that I wouldn’t have been able to without access to this program.

How do you look forward to impacting the field of Ethnic Studies? 

It is my humble desire that by the time I graduate from this program, my work can serve as a citation for others to build on, for which I hope to be able to produce scholarship that is methodologically and conceptually evocative as well as responsibly talks back to operations of white supremacy, brahmanism, and cis-heteropatriarchy in extractive industries. Outside of my research, I hope to use care and joy as my guiding compass in my teaching and community work. Amidst the constant noise, I want to utilize my Ethnic Studies training to help cultivate the quiet we desire as young people to connect with ourselves and our histories – however messy these might be. This is crucial in understanding our place and purpose in this world, in gentle and sustainable ways.

Rochelle McFee

Email:  rmcfee@ucsd.edu

Research Interests: gender and sexuality, violence against women and girls, feminist movement building, Immigration and reintegration of Deported Migrants.

Which course, assignment or research opportunity has been your most remarkable, thus far, as an Ethnic Studies doctoral student?  

ETHN 289, "Interdisciplinary Methods and Special Topics: Social Movements and Culture," was the most remarkable course in my Ph.D. journey, profoundly shaping both my academic development and teaching philosophy. This course was a deep dive into the intricate relationships between social movements, culture, and the broader dynamics of race, gender, and power. It was here that I not only honed my understanding of these critical intersections but also found the inspiration to develop a course syllabus that has since become a cornerstone of my teaching portfolio.
The interdisciplinary approach of ETHN 289 opened my eyes to the various methodologies and theoretical frameworks that can be employed to study social movements. We explored the cultural politics of resistance, the role of art and media in mobilizing communities, and the complex ways in which race and gender shape and are shaped by social movements. This course was intellectually invigorating, pushing me to think critically about how social movements are not just responses to oppression but also powerful sites of cultural production and identity formation.
What made ETHN 289 particularly remarkable was how it equipped me with the tools and insights to create the syllabus for ETHN 109, "Race and Social Movements," a class I have had the privilege of teaching across three summers as a Ph.D. candidate. Drawing from the interdisciplinary methods and rich discussions from ETHN 289, I designed ETHN 109 to engage students with both historical and contemporary social movements, encouraging them to explore the cultural and political contexts in which these movements arise.
In ETHN 109, students critically examine movements such as the Civil Rights Movement, Black Lives Matter, and global struggles for LGBTQ+ rights, using the frameworks I encountered in ETHN 289. They also engage with the cultural artifacts—music, film, art—that have been integral to these movements, understanding how culture both reflects and fuels resistance. This approach has resonated deeply with students, many of whom have expressed that the course has profoundly impacted their understanding of race, activism, and their own role in the fight for justice.
The most rewarding aspect of teaching ETHN 109 has been witnessing how students, inspired by the course content, have actively engaged in social movements and reflected on their individual roles in securing justice and freedom for all. Many have gone on to participate in or even lead activist initiatives, applying the theoretical knowledge and critical thinking skills they developed in the course to real-world challenges.

Which course, assignment or research opportunity has been your most remarkable, thus far, as an Ethnic Studies doctoral student? 

ETHN 291, my Comprehensive Exam Preparation course, was without a doubt the most challenging and transformative experience of my Ph.D. journey. This course was designed to prepare me for the comprehensive exams, a milestone that demanded an exhaustive engagement with the vast and complex body of literature within Ethnic Studies. However, it became much more than an academic hurdle; it was a crucible that fundamentally reshaped my understanding of my own research and its place within the broader field. The intellectual rigor required in ETHN 291 was unlike anything I had previously encountered. The course forced me to delve deeply into the theoretical foundations of Ethnic Studies, critically engaging with key texts and debates that define the field. It was during this time that I grappled with questions of how my work on Black girlhood, queer identities, and gender-based violence in the Caribbean fit into the larger discourse on the global production of Blackness. One of the most challenging aspects of the course was synthesizing the diverse and often divergent perspectives within Ethnic Studies, and positioning my work within these debates. I had to critically assess how my research on the Caribbean, contributes to and complicates existing discourses on Blackness. The course pushed me to articulate how the Tallawah framework I was developing not only redefines Black girlhood but also intervenes in global conversations about the intersections of race, gender, and coloniality. Moreover, ETHN 291 required me to consider the implications of my work beyond the Caribbean context, particularly in how it speaks to the global phenomena of gender-based violence and the pathologization of non-heteronormative identities. This process was intellectually demanding, as it required me to bridge the specificities of my ethnographic research with broader theoretical frameworks, such as the coloniality of power, diaspora studies, and Black feminist theory.

What has been your proudest accomplishment (so far) as an Ethnic Studies doctoral student?

Receiving the American Association of University Women (AAUW) Fellowship as a Ph.D. student stands as one of my proudest accomplishments, not just for the recognition it brought, but for what it symbolizes in my journey as a scholar and advocate for Black girlhood and queer identities in the Caribbean.
This fellowship was more than just financial support; it was an affirmation of the importance and relevance of my work in a world where the voices and experiences of Black girls are often marginalized or misunderstood. The AAUW's belief in my research gave me the encouragement to push forward in areas that were challenging, both personally and academically.
The AAUW Fellowship connected me with a network of extraordinary women scholars and activists whose own work in advancing gender equity and social justice inspired me. Being part of this community reinforced my commitment to using my research as a tool for advocacy and change, particularly in addressing the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in the Caribbean.
Looking back, the receipt of the AAUW Fellowship was a pivotal moment in my academic journey. It was a recognition of the potential impact of my work and a reminder that my research could contribute to broader conversations around equity, justice, and representation. This achievement not only validated my efforts but also empowered me to continue pursuing my vision of a more inclusive and just world for Black girls and queer communities in the Caribbean.

How do you look forward to impacting the field of Ethnic Studies? 

My work brings a transformative and expansive approach to Ethnic Studies by centering the lived experiences, cultural practices, and narratives of Black girls in the Caribbean. Through the development of the Tallawah framework, I provide a reimagined lens for understanding Black girlhood that moves beyond the limiting and often pathologizing narratives of resilience. My research introduces an alternative discourse that embraces the complexities of Black girlhood, including aspects of joy, play, love, desire, defiance, and bodily autonomy.
By weaving together ethnographic immersion, narrative inquiry, and cultural analysis, I challenge the dominant paradigms within Ethnic Studies that often prioritize U.S.-centric perspectives. My work highlights the unique socio-spatial dynamics and cultural pressures in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean, offering a nuanced understanding of how colonial legacies continue to shape the identities and experiences of marginalized communities.

Gus Meuschke

Email: gmeuschk@ucsd.edu

Education: BA Vassar College; MA University of Arizona

Research Interests: My research interests broadly include queer of color critique, Indigenous studies, comparative ethnic studies, visual archival research, museum studies, and performance studies. In my doctoral research, I want to investigate the possibility of queer multiracial social formations and shared ways of being that do not have foundations in anti-Blackness and settler colonialism, which I will locate in speculative visual archives, art, and performance.

Naaila Mohammed

Email: namohamm@ucsd.edu

Amira Noeuv

Email: amnoeuv@ucsd.edu

Research Interests: Critical Refugee Studies; Global Mental Health Studies; Asian American Studies

My research focuses on second-generation Cambodian American transgenerational trauma healing.

Which course, assignment or research opportunity has been your most remarkable, thus far, as an Ethnic Studies doctoral student?  

Teaching Environmental Racism during summer sessions
Serving as a Graduate Student Researcher for the Intergenerational Health & Healing Project

Which course, assignment or research opportunity has been your most remarkable, thus far, as an Ethnic Studies doctoral student? 

Serving as a teaching assistant for Introduction to Ethnic Studies courses remotely

What has been your proudest accomplishment (so far) as an Ethnic Studies doctoral student?

Managing personal responsibilities, multiple employments, and working on my own research
Receiving the AAUW fellowship
Publishing with Amerasia Journal

How do you look forward to impacting the field of Ethnic Studies? 

Expanding ethnic studies into other interdisciplinary fields such as public/global health, and international affairs studies. Creatively present or write about my research.

India Pierce

Email: ipierce@ucsd.edu

Education: Ohio University, B.A. Women and Gender Studies; The Ohio State University, M.A. African and African American Studies  

Areas of Interests : Visual Ethnography, Performance Studies, Feminist Pedagogy, Gender and Sexuality, Religion, Black Radicalism, Embodiment epistemology,  Speculative Imaginaries and Methodologies, Social Movements, Popular Culture, and Queer theory. 

Research: My work investigates the expansive spiritual freedom that is opened up when thinking about the past/present/future of queer divine embodiment. Central to that exploration is my question of how queer women of color activists queer notions of salvation in order to create alternative pathways to the divine.  Ultimately,  illuminating how those practices can be read as not only acts of self-love that demand a different type of engagement with the world around them, but also as a practice of freedom that impacts their work as organizers and activists.

Email: darios@ucsd.edu

B. Pricila Rodriguez

Email: brr022@ucsd.edu                                                                 

Education: B.A. in Gender and Women Studies and B.A. in Anthropology at the University of Arizona

Research Interests: Race, space, and punishment; connections between the spaces of prisons, immigrant detention centers, reservations, ghettos, and borders

Isaias Rogel

Email: irogel@ucsd.edu 

Pronouns: They/them

Education: New Mexico State University, MA, Creative Writing; Northeastern Illinois University, BA, English/Creative Writing

Liliana Sampedro

Email: lsampedr@ucsd.edu 

Research Interests: Native American and Indigenous studies; Indigenous water-based pedagogies and methods; critical geography; Critical Latinx Indigeneities; relational ethnic studies; Indigenous and Latina feminisms; cultural studies; speculation; memory and oral history.

My dissertation explores how Ñuu Savi (Mixteco) Indigenous water relations, and water itself, invite us to rethink ideas about race, migration, space, time, and Indigenous being and belonging.

Which course, assignment or research opportunity has been your most remarkable, thus far, as an Ethnic Studies doctoral student?  

My qualifying paper combined visual cultural analysis, critical geography, and Indigenous feminisms to think about how the confluence of two rivers have exceeded the spatialities of the U.S.-Mexico border. My qualifying paper was significant for me because it marked a turning point in my thinking and writing about migration and borders and towards writing on water in all its present and shifting formations. Water started as a way for me to think critically about Indigenous communities whose lands are bifurcated by the U.S.-Mexico border and pushed me to begin writing seriously about my own Ñuu Savi communities as “People of the Rain.”

Which course, assignment or research opportunity has been your most remarkable, thus far, as an Ethnic Studies doctoral student? 

Broadly, the faculty and students in the Department of Ethnic Studies have taught me to think about interdisciplinary methods in more expansive, creative, and challenging ways. The introductory ethnic studies graduate seminars have challenged me to question disciplinary boundaries, pose questions about the intersections, divergences, and relationships between academic fields of knowledge (and their accompanying methods and methodologies), and reconsider more ethical research practices. Ultimately, I’ve been challenged to think through how I might advance the project of ethnic studies by offering theoretical and practical tools for transforming uneven social and material relations.

What has been your proudest accomplishment (so far) as an Ethnic Studies doctoral student?

As a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, I’m currently developing a community-engaged research project on recovering and documenting Tu’un Savi (Mixteco) placenames and histories with my communities in the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca.

How do you look forward to impacting the field of Ethnic Studies? 

I hope to contribute to emerging conversations at the crossings of Native American and Indigenous studies, Latino/a/x and ethnic studies, and Latin American studies. By accounting for the experiences of Indigenous peoples from Latin America, I hope my scholarship will challenge ethnic studies frameworks of race, immigration, land, and labor.

Noelle Sepina

Bettina Serna

Email: bserna@ucsd.edu

Education: California State University, San Marcos, BA and MA

Research: Latinx communities, economy and incarceration related to cannabis

Victoria Siamau

Email: vsiaumau@ucsd.edu 

Education: BA Child Development and Ethnic Studies, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo 

Research Interests:  Critical race, feminist, queer and decolonial science and technology studies

Sierra Sims

Email: ssims@ucsd.edu

Education: BA Southern Oregon University

Research Interests: I am interested in furthering my study in Native American Studies through the vein of violence against Native women, girls and 2Spirit peoples in Oregon. In order to do so, I aim to follow and support Oregon House Bill 2625, which is undergoing its year long trial, where the state police department will be working with Native Nations to create a database for accurate statistics.

Citlally Solorzano

Email: csolorzano@ucsd.edu 

Education: BA Chicanx/a/o Studies, Cal State Fullerton

Research Interests: Decolonial form of expression in BIPOC popular culture

My research seeks to locate and deconstruct how cumbia rhythms and cumbia cultures (can) reproduce colonial, heteropatriarchal, and neoliberal foundations of being and their impact on Queer and Femme Black and Brown Latinx bodies and experiences. Through critical and disobedient listening, I examine how cumbia genealogies within and across the Latinx diaspora are interlinked with the geopolitical landscapes surrounding them, specifically throughout the intimate and physical borderlands across the US-Mexico border. I then look at how Queer and Femme Black and Brown Latinx folks push against the heteropatriarchal, anti-Black, and anti-Indigenous narratives within these neoliberal cumbia productions through “everyday” intimacies, both internally and externally. This work is grounded in Chicanx and Latinx Studies, Critical Latinx Studies, Latinx Sound Studies, Performance Studies, Ethnic Studies and Critical Gender Studies.

Which course, assignment or research opportunity has been your most remarkable, thus far, as an Ethnic Studies doctoral student?  

This past Spring quarter I took Dr. Jade Power-Sotomayor’s “Queer Nightlife: Race, Gender, and Sexuality After Dark” course. Due to the time conflict, I was not able to attend the grad seminar but was present during the undergraduate course under the same title. Learning with and from undergraduate students was a truly fulfilling and wholesome experience. It was a reminder of why I pursued this program– to be in conversation with other students and learn how to build community with one another.

Which course, assignment or research opportunity has been your most remarkable, thus far, as an Ethnic Studies doctoral student? 

During the Winter quarter of my first year in the program, I took the most challenging course I’ve taken thus far. I had the honor and privilege of learning from Dr. Shaista Patel’s ETIM 289 “Race/Gender/Sexuality/Caste (The ‘Human’ Question)”. The readings and discussions during this course were and are difficult, but have largely impacted the research I am passionate about.

What has been your proudest accomplishment (so far) as an Ethnic Studies doctoral student?

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to guest lecture at my alma mater, Cal State Fullerton, for my mentor Dr. Mario Obando’s “Cariño in the Time of the Pandemic” course. During my presentation, I shared my findings from the oral histories I produced for our ongoing project, “Archives of Mortality,” in which we interview folks from within and beyond our community about their experiences during the first year of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

How do you look forward to impacting the field of Ethnic Studies? 

During this program and beyond, I hope to bridge the gap between Ethnic Studies in the classroom and Ethnic Studies in the community. I was inspired by my colleagues, Phuc and Victoria’s, conference earlier this year in which they challenged the locality of the Ethnic Studies classroom and the hierarchization that often falls behind that. I hope to develop programs that directly collaborate with local community organizations to expand Ethnic Studies beyond the institution to where they become more accessible to others.

Sara Sparks

Email: sjsparks@ucsd.edu 

Education: Combined BS/BA in Agribusiness and Comparative Ethnic Studies, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo; MA Higher Education and Student Affairs, Boston College 

Research Interests: Black and Indigenous relationships to food and land

Phuc To

Email: pdto@ucsd.edu

Education: BA Biological Sciences & MA Asian American Studies, UC Irvine 

Research Interests: For my dissertation research, I want to interrogate ways in which the rise of NPIC has compromised Black-Asian solidarity and Asian American radicalism and activism since the late 1970s.

Jael Vizcarra

Email: jvizcarr@ucsd.edu

Research: Jael Vizcarra is a Ph.D. Candidate in Ethnic Studies at UC San Diego. Her dissertation is entitled, "En Búsqueda de Posada: Military Rule and the Laotian Resettlement Program in Misiones, Argentina." Jael’s dissertation historicizes the 1979 Southeast Asian refugee resettlement program in Argentina and analyzes the incorporation of Laotian refugees into the Argentine labor force during and after the Argentine military dictatorship. Her research highlights the political origins of displacement and humanitarianism in South America and their relation to U.S. imperialist projects. Jael analyzes the resettlement of Southeast Asian refugees in various Argentine provinces to understand how refugees contest their ascribed role as objects of compassion and intervention.

Jael's scholarship is informed by comparative racial formation theories, Asian-American Studies, and Critical Refugee and Immigration Studies. Her research gestures towards a transnational reading of the US-centric and universalizing category of "Asian-American" by elucidating the geopolitical implications of South American racial formations that produce Asians beyond US-based racial logics and categories.  

Her work has appeared in Amerasia and the popular historiography blog Tropics of Meta.

Racquel West

Email: rawest@ucsd.edu

Education: BA Geography and History, U of Washington  

Research Interests: Museum studies and speculative theory 

Muhammad Yousuf

Email: syousuf@ucsd.edu

Education: B.A. in Philosophy, Political Science, Gender and Women Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2017

Research interests: historical and narrative depictions of martyrdom; ideas of the self, the soul, and liberation in critical theory and decolonial thought; gender and resistance; Critical Muslim Studies; sectarianism & Islamophobia; Shi'i liberation theology; complicity & neoliberalism; martyrdom & memory; political spirituality & secularism; decolonial, abolitionist & anarchist thought; continental philosophy

Which course, assignment or research opportunity has been your most remarkable, thus far, as an Ethnic Studies doctoral student?  

Teaching my own summer course on US Muslim Politics & Culture!

Which course, assignment or research opportunity has been your most remarkable, thus far, as an Ethnic Studies doctoral student? 

ETHN 289--Complicating Solidarities with Dr. Patel (SP19)

What has been your proudest accomplishment (so far) as an Ethnic Studies doctoral student?

Seeing undergraduate students and workers across this campus implementing ethnic studies' radical critiques of this institution through their activism.

How do you look forward to impacting the field of Ethnic Studies? 

My goal is to produce and practice ethnic studies scholarship and pedagogy which disrupt the University's active complicity in the destruction of life and land.

Christie Yamasaki

Email: chyamasaki@ucsd.edu 

Pronouns: She/her

Education: University of California Los Angeles, MA, Asian American Studies; University of California Los Angeles, BA, Economics