Faculty Advisory Committee

The UCLA American Indian Studies Center Faculty Advisory Committee comprises of members from different departments all over the campus. Click on each individual members' research focus to read more about them.

Members of the FAC are available for contact by the media: Media Contact List.

2020–2021

Faculty Advisory Committee Chair
	Professor Teresa McCarty UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies Email: teresa.mccarty@ucla.edu Research Focus
Members of the Faculty Advisory Committee
	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.
	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.
	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.
	Associate Professor Erin Debenport Department of Anthropology 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 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 Nancy Marie Mithlo Department of Gender Studies Email: mithlo@ucla.edu Research Focus
	Associate Professor Stella Nair Department of Art History Email: snair@humnet.ucla.edu Research Focus Stella Nairâ€™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 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 School of Law Email: grsalgado@irle.ucla.edu Research Focus Dr. Gaspar Rivera-SalgadoÂ received his doctorate in sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. 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. Among his most recent publications include the volume (with J. Fox)Â Indigenous Mexican Migration in the United StatesÂ (UCSD 2005); and the recently published volume (with E. Telles, and M. Sawyer)Â Just Neighbors?: Research on African American and Latino Relations in the United StatesÂ (Russell Sage, 2011).
	Dr. Wendy Teeter Curator of Archaeology, Fowler Museum Email: wteeter@arts.ucla.edu Research Focus Her research focuses on issues related to indigenous peoplesâ€™ rights, with a particular emphasis on cultural property and Native governance.
	Rey Soto, ex-officio Staff Representative Programmer Analyst, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology Email: reysoto@ucla.edu Research Focus

Faculty Advisory Committee

Faculty Advisory Committee Chair

Members of the Faculty Advisory Committee

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