Principal Investigator

María de los Ángeles Torres is University Distinguished Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago and former Principal investigator/Director of the IUPLR/UIC Mellon Fellowship Program. She received her PhD from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She taught political science at DePaul University in Chicago from 1987 to 2005 and was faculty associate at the University of Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies, 2000-2001 and a research fellow at Chapin Hall, University of Chicago 2002. She is the former Executive Director of the Inter-University Program for Latino Research (2013-2018). Dr. Torres is the author of three books, Democracy and Time in Cuban Thought: The Elusive Present (University of Florida Press, 2024); The Lost Apple: Operation Pedro Pan, Cuban Children in the US and the Promise of a Better Future (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004); In the Land of Mirrors: The Politics of Cuban Exiles in the United States (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999). She is co-author of Citizens in the Present: Youth Civic Engagement in the Americas (University of Illinois Press, 2013). In addition, she has edited By Heart/De Memoria: Cuban Women's Journeys In and Out of Exile (Philadelphia: Temple University, 2002), and co-edited Global Cities and Immigrants: A Comparative Study of Chicago and Madrid, (Peter Lang, 2015), and Borderless Borders: Latinos, Latin American and the Paradoxes of Interdependence (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998). Dr. Torres has published chapters and essays on issues of diversity, US/Cuba relations, and immigration.

Principal Investigator

Daniel Borzutzky is Associate Professor of English and Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. A poet and translator from Spanish, whose books of poetry include The Murmuring Grief of the Americas (Coffee House Press, 2024); Written After a Massacre in the Year 2018 (Coffee House Press, 2021); Lake Michigan (University of Pittsburgh, 2018). Finalist for the Griffin International Poetry Prize; The Performance of Becoming Human (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2016), Winner of the National Book Award for Poetry; In the Murmurs of the Rotten Carcass Economy (Nightboat, 2015) andThe Book of Interfering Bodies (Nightboat, 2011). He is Director of UIC’s Center for Latinx Literature of the Americas (lxla.uic.edu), a cultural and programming hub for hemispheric art and literature. He has also served as a Founding Artistic Director for the Lit and Luz Festival. He teaches courses in Creative Writing, Literature, and Latin American and Latinx Culture.

Managing Director

Olga U. Herrera is an art historianand affiliated faculty in the Department of Latin American and Latino Studies Program at the University of Illinois Chicago. Dr. Herrera previously served as director of the Inter-University Program for Latino Research (IUPLR) Washington Office and held positions at the University of Notre Dame and the Smithsonian Institution. She is the author of Toward the Preservation of a Heritage: Latin American and Latino Art in the Midwestern United States (ILS, University of Notre Dame, 2008); American Interventions and Modern Art in South America (University Press of Florida, 2017; 2019) winner of the 2018 SECAC Award for Excellence in Scholarly Research and Publication; and editor of Scherezade García: From This Side of the Atlantic (AMA, 2020); iliana emilia García: The Reason/The Object/The Word (AMA, 2020); and Maria Luisa Pacheco: Geographies of Abstraction (AMA, 2025). Her essays and interviews have appeared in publications of the ICAA-MFAH, Archives of American Art Journal, MIT ARTMargins, Diálogo, Public Art Dialogue, Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures of the Americas, and others. She holds a Ph.D. in Latin American modern and contemporary art history and theories of globalization from George Mason University. 

Program Advisor

Amalia Pallares is currently Vice Provost for Inclusive Excellence at Arizona State University. She is the former Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Engagement at the University of Illinois Chicago where she was on the faculty for 23 years since earning her PhD in Political Science from the University of Texas at Austin. A scholar of social movements and political identities in Latin America and the U.S., Dr. Pallares is the author or editor of several books and other publications, including Family Activism: Immigrant Struggles and the Politics of Noncitizenship (2014), Marcha: Latino Chicago and the Immigrant Rights Movement (2010) and From Peasant Struggles to Indian Resistance (2002).  While serving as an advisor to the Chancellor and Provost on many campus issues and initiatives, Dr Pallares was the Co-PI of Crossing Latinidades (2021-2024).

Fellowship Coordinator

Frida Sanchez Vega is a doctoral candidate in the English department at the University of Illinois Chicago, focusing on rhetorical studies. She was a Crossing Latinidades Mellon Fellow in 2022-23.  Her academic research includes ethnography of asylum seekers at the U.S.- Mexico border while analyzing citizenship and the birth of the nation-state through the lenses of critical rhetoric and immigration rhetoric. She aims to expand the rhetorical understanding of immigration, refugees, and the citizen/non-citizen dynamic. 

Director, Crossing Latinidades Writing Lab

Deanna Ledezma is the Director of the Crossing Latinidades Writing Lab and a Postdoctoral Research Associate. She earned her Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Illinois Chicago and specializes in the history and theory of photography and Latinx art and visual culture. She is also a Lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she teaches in the Departments of Art History and Liberal Arts. She is currently completing her book manuscript Unsettled Archives: Kinships and Diasporas in Latinx Photography. Previous publications include essays, articles, and reviews in Art Journal, Photography & Culture, caa.reviews, Latin American Art and Visual Culture, and the book Reworking Labor. Forthcoming scholarly essays will be published in two edited volumes: The Routledge Handbook of American Material Culture Studies and Feminist Visual Solidarities and Kinships.