Affiliated Faculty

The UCLA American Indian Studies Center has affiliated faculty from all over campus.

	Professor Stephen Acabado UCLA Department of Anthropology Email: acabado@ucla.edu Research Focus Historical ecology, landscape archaeology, agricultural systems, settlement patterns, emergent complexity, indigenous peoples; Southeast Asia, Philippines, Guam, Micronesia.
	Associate Professor Randall Akee Department of Public Policy Email: rakee@ucla.edu Research Focus Areas of interest include economic development, ethnicity and development politics, immigration, labor and employment.
	Professor Stephen Aron Department of History Email: saron@history.ucla.edu Research Focus Frontiers and borderlands in North America.
	Associate Professor Maylei Blackwell Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies Email: maylei@chavez.ucla.edu Research Focus U.S. women of color feminist theory, Womenâ€™s social movements in Mexico, Transnational organizing, Queer of color genealogies, oral history and ethnography.
	Assistant Professor Tria Blu Wakpa Department of World Arts and Culture/Dance Email: triabluwakpa@arts.ucla.edu Research Focus A scholar and practitioner of Indigenous contemporary dance, North American Hand Talk (Indigenous sign language), martial arts, and yoga. Her research combines community-based, Indigenous and feminist methodologies with critical race theories to examine the politics and practices of dance and embodiment historically and contemporarily in educational and carceral institutions for Indigenous peoples.
	Professor Tara Browner Department of Ethnomusicology Email: tbrowner@ucla.edu Research Focus Her current research focus is on manifestations of pow-wow culture in Northern Europe. Native North American music and dance; Native North American contemporary music; musical imagery of Indians in popular culture; indigenous concepts of music theory; American music.
	Associate Professor Keith Camacho Department of Asian American Studies Email: kcamacho@ucla.edu Research Focus Chamorro cultural and historical memory, as well as American and Japanese colonialism in Asia and Oceania. Current research includes Samoan youth violence, health, and justice in Auckland, Aotearoa, and Los Angeles, California.
	Associate Professor Jessica Cattelino Department of Anthropology Email: jesscatt@anthro.ucla.edu Research Focus Associate Professor Cattelino's research focuses on economy, nature, indigeneity, and settler colonialism. She studies and teaches about sociocultural life in the contemporary United States.
	Lecturer Jaye Darby TEP Faculty Advisor Department of Education Email: jdarby@ucla.edu Research Focus
	Associate Professor Erin Debenport Department of Anthropology Associate Director of the UCLA American Indian Studies Center Email: erindebenport@ucla.edu Research Focus I am a linguistic and sociocultural anthropologist, interested in technologies of language circulation, secrecy and (in)visibility, indigeneity and sovereignty, and critical language documentation. My work is concentrated in the Pueblo Southwest and the Mexico-Texas-New Mexico border region.
	Professor Linda Garro Department of Anthropology Email: lgarro@anthro.ucla.edu Research Focus Health care decision making; health and illness in everyday life contexts; cultural models; narrative and illness; remembering
	Professor Hanay Geiogamah Department of Televison, Film, and Theater Email: hgeiog@ucla.edu Research Focus American Indian dance and theater.
	Associate Professor Mishuana Goeman Department of Gender Studies Email: goeman@gender.ucla.edu Research Focus Native American Literature, 20th Century American Literature, Race and Ethnic Theory
	Professor Patricia Greenfield Department of Psychology Email: greenfield@psych.ucla.edu Research Focus My central theoretical and research interest is in the relationship between social change, culture, and human development. I have studied three generations of child development and socialization in a Maya community in Chiapas, Mexico as the community experienced a radical shift in their way of life and economy from subsistence and agriculture to money and commerce. This research led to a theory of social change, cultural evolution, and human development, first published in 2009. With collaborators in many parts of the world, the theory has generated studies of social change, cultural evolution, and human development in the U.S., Israel, China, and various regions of Mexico.
	Professor Felicia Hodge School of Nursing and Public Health Email: fhodge@sonnet.ucla.edu Research Focus Health issues and developing and testing culturally sensitive intervention models for American Indian populations.
	Professor Paul Kroskrity Department of Anthropology Email: paulvk@ucla.edu Research Focus Language and culture, language contact, language and identity, language ideologies, anthropology and verbal art, and the ethnography of communication; American Indian Languages (especially the Kiowa-Tanoan and Uto-Aztecan families); the Pueblo Southwest, Central California.
	Associate Professor Benjamin Madley Department of History Email: madley@ucla.edu Research Focus He writes about California Indians as well as colonial genocides in Africa, Australia, and Europe, often applying a transnational and comparative approach.
	Assistant Professor Ananda Marin Department of Education Email: marin@gseis.ucla.edu Research Focus I explore questions about the socio-cultural dimensions of learning and development in everyday and intergenerational contexts. In one line of work I examine the practices that children and families use to reason and build knowledge about the natural world. I am particularly interested in (1) how families coordinate attention and observation while participating in science activities, (2) how mobility and place structure activity and (3) cultural variability in sensemaking practices such as question-asking and explaining. I also investigate Native American participation in STEM and cultural models of self as related to senses of capability and competence. Across my scholarship, I take a participatory approach and employ a variety of research designs and methods including: community-based design research, cognitive tasks, studies of everyday practices, content analysis, discourse analysis, interaction analysis and video-ethnography. Through my work I aim to answer basic research questions about development, innovate methods, and design teaching and learning tools that contribute to the goals and well-being of Indigenous and non-dominant communities.
	Assistant Professor Kyle T. Mays Department of African American Studies Email: mayskyle@ucla.edu Research Focus Indigenous Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies, and Indigenous popular culture.
	Professor Vickie Mays Department of Psychology Email: maysv@nicco.sscnet.ucla.edu/a> Research Focus Mental health in ethnic minority communities and women.
	Professor Teresa McCarty UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies Email: teresa.mccarty@ucla.edu Research Focus
	Professor Nancy Marie Mithlo Department of Gender Studies Email: mithlo@ucla.edu Research Focus Visual anthropology, Indigenous visual arts and curation, gender analysis, film studies, photographic archives, museum critique, arts education and Indigenous knowledge production; Native North America, globalized popular culture.
	Assistant Professor Ho'esta Mo'e'hahne Department of English Email: moehahne@ucla.edu Research Focus Critical Indigenous studies; Indigenous literature of North America, Queer Indigenous Literature; Sexuality and Gender studies; Queer theory; Decolonial thought; Settler imperialism; Comparative studies of empire and race; Cultural studies
	Professor Emeritus Pamela Munro Department of Linguistics Email: munro@ucla.edu Research Focus My primary research involves the study of all aspects of the grammar of a number of different American Indian languages (currently focusing on Chickasaw, San Lucas QuiavinÃ Zapotec and other varieties of Tlacolula Valley Zapotec, Pima, Gabrielino / Tongva / FernandeÃ±o, Lakhota, Tolkapaya Yavapai, and Garifuna, and among others) and language families (especially Muskogean, Uto-Aztecan, Yuman, and Zapotecan) â€” their syntax, phonology, lexicon, history â€” both through fieldwork with native speakers and through comparative research and analysis of existing descriptions. In the field of syntax, I am often concerned with problems of agreement, reference, and subjecthood. I consider it vital to make linguistic findings available to native speakers and other interested laymen through accurate, accessible descriptive and pedagogical materials, including dictionaries. I am particularly interested in working out better ways to make dictionaries, since I feel that this process generally illuminates most aspects of grammar.
	Professor Peter Nabokov Department of World Arts & Cultures/Dance Email: pnabokov@arts.ucla.edu Research Focus Ethnographic and ethnohistorical research with Native American communities throughout North America.
	Associate Professor Stella Nair Department of Art History Email: snair@humnet.ucla.edu Research Focus Stella Nair's scholarship focuses on the built environment of indigenous communities in the Americas and is shaped by her interests in construction technology, spatial theory, material culture studies, landscape transformations, cross-cultural exchange, and hemispheric networks. Trained as an architect and architectural historian (University of California, Berkeley), Nair has conducted fieldwork in Bolivia, Mexico, Peru, and the United States, with ongoing projects in the South Central Andes.
	Professor Ellen Pearlstein Department of Information Studies Email: epearl@ucla.edu Research Focus Conservation and preservastion practices in tribal museums; inclusion of community prinicples in conservation practice.
	Distinguished Professor Sherene Razack Department of Gender Studies Email: sherenerazack@ucla.edu Research Focus Her research focuses on racial violence.
	Professor Angela R. Riley School of Law Email: riley@law.ucla.edu Research Focus Her research focuses on issues related to indigenous peoplesâ€™ rights, with a particular emphasis on cultural property and Native governance.
	Dr. Gaspar Rivera-Salgado Project Director at the Labor Center Email: grsalgado@irle.ucla.edu Research Focus He is currently Project Director at UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education where he teaches classes on Work, Labor and Social Justice in the US and immigration issues. He also directs the Institute for Transnational Social Change. He has extensive experience as an independent consultant on transnational migration, race and ethnic relations and diversity trainings for large organizations.
	Assistant Professor Desi Rodriguez-Lonebear Department of Sociology Email: desisr@soc.ucla.edu Research Focus Survey research in partnership with Indigenous communities and other marginalized populations. Indigenous studies, sociology of race and ethnicity, political sociology, sociology of knowledge, critical demography, health policy research, and science and technology studies.
	Assistant Professor Christine Samuel-Nakamura School of Nursing Email: cnakamura@sonnet.ucla.edu Research Focus Areas of Scholarly Expertise and Interest Community environmental health research, heavy metal contamination, AI health, behavioral health, healthcare, and research.
	Associate Professor Greg Schachner Department of Anthropology Email: gschachner@anthro.ucla.edu Research Focus Transformations in leadership and social structure in ancient farming societies.
	Professor David Shorter Department of World Arts and Culture/Dance Email: shorter@ucla.edu Research Focus Cultural studies, epistemology, ethnography, history of science, ontology, paranormal studies, and colonialisms.
	Professor Shannon Speed Department of Gender Studies and Anthropology Director of the UCLA American Indian Studies Center Email: sspeed@aisc.ucla.edu Research Focus Indigenous Latin American women migrants and gender violence
	Professor Ramesh Srinivasan Department of Information Studies Email: srinivasan@gseis.ucla.edu Research Focus Development of information systems within the context of culturally-differentiated communities.
	Dr. Wendy Teeter Curator of Archaeology, Fowler Museum at UCLA; UCLA Repatriation Coordinator Email: wteeter@arts.ucla.edu Research Focus Teeter collaborates nationally and internationally with Indigenous communities on issues of repatriation, Indigenous archaeology and cultural heritage protection, especially in Southern California. She is Co-PI for Mapping Indigenous Los Angeles, a community-based website devoted to storytelling through cultural geography and map making on Tongva and Tataviam lands as well as providing educational resources and curriculum and for Carrying our Ancestors Home, which tells the history of repatriation at UCLA and stories of repatriation from Indigenous communities.
	Professor Kevin Terraciano Department of History Email: terra@history.ucla.edu Research Focus Latin American history, especially Mexico and the Indigenous cultures and languages of central and southern Mexico (especially Nahuatl, Mixtec, and Zapotec) in the colonial period.
	Associate Professor Aradhna Tripati Center for Diverse Leadership in Science Director & P.I., Institute of Environment and Sustainability, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Earth, Planetary, and Space Science Email: atripati@g.ucla.edu Research Focus Climate change; the history and dynamics of changing Earth systems including climate, ice sheets, oceans, the water cycle, carbon dioxide levels; tool development; and clumped isotope geochemistry.

Affiliated Faculty

Quicklinks

AISConnect →