Daisy E. Guzman Nunez
Miriam Jiménez Román Fellow (2023-2024)
Daisy E. Guzman Nunez is a Garifuna American from the South Bronx. Her work centers on the migratory experience of Garifuna-Guatemalan women from Livingston, Guatemala, to the South Bronx. Through a Black Feminist Ethnographic lens, she bears witness to ancestral praxis and ancestral knowledge embedded in the cultural performativity of Garifuna women and their matrilineal networks. Her research praxis and pedagogy lean on the Intellectual contributions of Black women such as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, Mayra Santos, and M. Jacqui Alexander to discuss the connection between the body, land, and the ancestors in everyday theory and intellectualism. There is an intimacy in creating cultural spaces in the urban landscape. The Garifuna hub in the South Bronx is not a novelty but an extension of the Caribbean Space to include the Afro-Indigenous experience. Her interdisciplinary work centers women's voices to challenge how we articulate Blackness and Indigeneity in Black Studies, Anthropology, and Latinx Studies. When she is not working on her research, she is a board member of La Fuerza Garifuna and a curriculum consultant with a community-engaged focus.
Daniel Arturo Almeida
Guest Curator (Spring 2024)
Daniel Arturo Almeida (b. 1992, Caracas, Venezuela) is a cultural producer and transdisciplinary artist working through photography, installation, archiving, and public engagement. Daniel's practice chronicles intimate and collective stories that shape belief systems and hierarchies of power in the Americas. The product of generational migrations, Almeida researches images, music, anecdotes, and documents portraying nationalism, nostalgia, and collective amnesia. Almeida has exhibited in The U.S.A in various institutions, galleries, and festivals, including A.I.R. Gallery, The Center for Art, Research, and Alliances (CARA), Tiger Strikes Asteroids, La Salita Project, Columbia Teachers College, Bridge Red Studios, Satellite Art Show, and the SVA Chelsea Galleries, among others. Almeida was a NEW INC member from 2021 to 2023, along with the co-founded collective, rico robo. His work has been reviewed in Hyperallergic and The Daily Lazy.
He holds an MFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts (2020) and a BFA in Art and Art History from Florida International University (2017). He currently works between Miami, FL, and New York, NY.
Alan Pelaez Lopez
Miriam Jiménez Román Fellow (2022-2023)
Alan Pelaez Lopez is an interdisciplinary writer, visual artist, and theorist from Oaxaca, México. In their poetic and visual work, Alan attends to questions of Black futures, trans* kinship, and Indigenous (un)belonging. They are the author of Intergalactic Travels: poems from a fugitive alien (The Operating System, 2020), a finalist for the International Latino Book Award, and to love and mourn in the age of displacement (Nomadic Press, 2020). Their writing is published in Teen Vogue, Refinery29, Best American Experimental Writing, the Georgia Review, and others. When they are not writing, Alan spendsmuch of their time organizing with queer and trans* migrants impacted by prisons and immigrant detention, sending out letters to loved ones, and making phone calls to Oaxaca. Alan is an assistant professor of queer and trans* ethnic studies at San Francisco State University.
Dulcina Abreu
Dulcina Abreu is a Dominican-born independent curator, artist, and museum advocate currently based in Baltimore, MD. She graduated with a MFA in Curatorial Practice from the Maryland Institute College of Art, focused on digital platforms and a BFA in Fine Arts and Media from Parsons, The New School. Prior to living in New York, Dulcina studied at The National School of Visual Arts and Altos de Chavon School of Design, both in the Dominican Republic. Abreu’s work explores 21st century visual and material culture from the Caribbean Diaspora in the US, immigration, community organizing, mutactivism. She serves as the Consulting Curator for the September 11th,2001: An Evolving Legacy project at the National Museum of American History; Co-founder of the International Coalition of Museum Professionals and Communities alongside Armando Perla. Abreu currently manages the NYC Latino 9-11 collecting initiative and NYC Latino COVID-19 project which aims to expand the national narrative with Latino/a new yorker stories and material culture; and will be joining the Latinx Youth Movements project this upcoming august to support lead curator Margaret Salazar-Porzio with a curatorial assistant position at the Molina Family Latino Gallery in collaboration with Smithsonian Latino Center and the National Museum of American History.
Celine Ayala, M.A
Celine Maria Ayala is a queer Afro-Puerto Rican doctoral candidate in the department of Sociology and Criminology at the University of New Mexico (UNM). Her current work examines Afrolatinx experiences of Blackness framed within an Afrolatin Critical Theory of Race to investigate how Afrolatinx folk are racialized through a transnational history of colonization, imperialism, and antiblackness. Her work is inspired by her late father’s stories of his transition from Carolina Puerto Rico to the mainland. Celine is the current representative and founder of the Afrolatinx Caucus within MALCS (Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social) as well as one of the newest members of the Black Latinas Know Collective Network, and a former TEDx Talk speaker. When not working on her dissertation she is working on her craft as as musician (bass, trumpet and vocals) and poet.
Paul Joseph López Oro, PhD
Miriam Jiménez Román Fellow (2021-2022)
We are happy to announce our second fellow, and friend and mentee of Miriam Jiménez Román, Paul Joseph López Oro. Paul Joseph is a scholar whose research interests include Black politics in Latin America, the Caribbean and U.S. AfroLatinidades, Black Latinx LGBTQ movements and performances, and Black transnationalism. He is working on his first book manuscript, Indigenous Blackness in the Americas: The Queer Politics of Self-Making Garifuna New York, a transdisciplinary study analyzing oral histories, performances, social media, film, literary texts and visual cultures to unearth the political, intellectual, cultural and spiritual genealogies of Garifuna women and subaltern geographies of Garifuna LGBTQ+ folks at the forefront of Garifuna transnational movements in New York City. This fellowship is named after our former NYU colleague, Miriam, to honor her legacy of mentorship and activism as an inspiring public intellectual and scholar of Afro Latinx studies.
Marcel Rosa-Salas, PhD
Media and Cultural Politics Fellow (2021-2022)
Marcel Rosa-Salas is a visiting scholar and recipient of The Latinx Project’s Media and Cultural Politics Fellowship. Marcel is a cultural anthropologist and documentary filmmaker from Brooklyn, NY. Her research centers on the racial politics of American advertising and consumer culture. Marcel’s forthcoming book, under contract with Duke University Press, explores the business of racially targeted marketing in the U.S, and the role of racial theories in the creation of ad campaigns.
Omaris Z. Zamora, PhD
Miriam Jiménez Román Fellow (2020-2021)
We are proud to share the news that we have renamed our Afro-Latinx fellowship after former NYU colleague Miriam Jiménez Román to honor her legacy of mentorship and activism as an inspiring public intellectual and scholar of Afro Latinx studies. Miriam was foundational to the development of Afro-Latinx studies at NYU and beyond, and we hope to cherish/continue her legacy, not only through this inaugural fellowship but also by actively advocating for appointments of full time faculty in this growing field. We are also very happy to announce our inaugural fellow, and former mentee of Miriam’s, Omaris Zamora. Omaris is a transnational Black Dominican Studies scholar and member of the Black Latinas Know Collective.
Ariana J. Valle, PhD
NYU Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow (2019-2021)
Ariana J. Valle is a recipient of New York University’s Provost's Postdoctoral Fellowship. The fellowship program was created by NYU to attract and support a wide range of brilliant young scholars and educators from diverse backgrounds whose research experience, life experience, and employment background significantly contribute to academic excellence. Ariana is an LA-born/raised sociologist of migration, race/racialization, and ethnoracial politics and focuses on the experiences of Latino communities in the U.S.
