Meet the 2026 Public Humanities Fellows

This year marks the sixth cycle of the Public Humanities Fellowship program at The Latinx Project: Interdisciplinary Center for Arts and Culture at New York University. This summer, nine graduate students from New York University and area institutions will gain career experience with local arts and culture organizations. Fellows will develop collaborative, reciprocal projects and advance public humanities relevant to their creative and research interests. 

This year's fellows include Luisa Alarcon Criales, Ana Herrera León De La Barra, Lucas De Lellis, Elicie Edmond, Diana Higuera Cortés, Arturo M. Longoria, Sara Padilla, Ari Reyes, Camila Sofia Rodriguez-Lopez. Partnering organizations include Asociación de Documentalistas de Puerto Rico, Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute, Centro Corona, Chatos Inhumanos/NYFA, El Armario NYC, El Puente, Mil Mundos, NuevaYorkinos, Selva Art Space.

As part of the program, fellows will participate in workshops with professor Karen Mary Davalos, Ph.D. and writer, curator and co-director of Transmitter Eva Mayhabal Davis.

Including this year’s cohort, 49 students have participated in the program since its founding. The Public Humanities Fellowship is made possible with support from the Mellon Foundation.

Meet the 2026 Public Humanities Fellows:

Luisa Alarcon Criales

Partner Organization: Centro Corona

Luisa Alarcón Criales is a Performance Studies PhD student at NYU and a New York City-based physical actor, educator, and anthropologist born and raised in Cali, Colombia. Her research focuses on war economy and the possibilities for worldmaking in reconciliation and transformable long-lasting justice in the context of Colombia. As an actor, Luisa has performed at international festivals such as the Festival International du Théâtre Universitaire de Tanger, Morocco, and at the International Festival for Contemporary & Experimental Theater in Cairo, Egypt. She was also an artist in residence at Circulo Escénico in Cholula, México, where she developed her performance piece "Llanto a la Pirámide." At the Magdalena Project in Ayllón, Spain, she developed a performance to commemorate over 500 years of the Spanish colonization in the Americas together with Gabriela Acosta and María Luisa Bringas Campos. As an Educator, Luisa is dedicated to student-centered instruction.

Ana Herrera León De La Barra

Partner Organization: Mil Mundos

Ana Herrera is a student of the MA in Experimental Humanities and Interdisciplinary studies at NYU. She has a BA in Latin American Literature from Universidad Iberoamericana, campus Mexico City, where she also works as a Research Assistant to Professor Michelle Gama at Centro de Estudios Críticos de Género y Feminismos (CECRIGE). At NYU, she is Co-Editor in Chief of the Journal of Experimental Practice. She works with intersectionality, critical posthumanism, and gender studies as theoretical perspectives, and she is interested in experimental Latin American poetry and narrative, particularly texts written in Spanglish. Above all, she is an obsessive and passionate reader.

Lucas De Lellis 

Partner Organization: Selva Art Space

Lucas De Lellis is a PhD student in Sociology of Education at Steinhardt, originally from Manaus, Brazil. They are interested in understanding how ideas on gender, sex, race, and class travel transnationally with Brazilian queer immigrants to New York City and Lisbon. 

Elicie Edmond

Partner Organization: Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute

Elicie Edmond is a rising fourth year doctoral student in English and American Studies at New York University. Her research interests include Caribbean literature– with a focus on Haiti and Haitian revolutionary literature– postcolonial studies, trauma studies, environmental humanities, decolonial theory, and Black feminist thought. Outside of her research interests she is a hopeless romantic, a precarious day dreamer, and a devout Qahwah House lover.

Diana Higuera Cortés

Partner Organization: El Puente

Diana Higuera-Cortésis a PhD candidate in the Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures (LAILaC) program at the CUNY Graduate Center. She received her BA in Language Teaching from Universidad Pedagógica Nacional in Bogotá and her MA in Spanish and Latin American and Caribbean Studies from St. John’s University. Her research focuses on the intersection of migration, language, and (domestic) labor. She is also interested in Language Ideologies, Latinx Studies, Spanish as a Heritage Language, and Critical approaches to language teaching and learning. She is the creator/author of “La Lotería Niuyorkina”. A former CUNY Humanities Alliance fellow, she is currently an Adjunct Faculty member at Lehman College, CUNY.

Arturo M. Longoria

Partner Organization: El Armario NYC

Arturo M. Longoria is a writer and interdisciplinary researcher pursuing a PhD in Spanish and Portuguese at New York University. Born in Texas and raised in Mexico, his work explores the U.S.-Mexico border through questions of feminicidio, necropolitics, queer studies, visual culture, and performance. His dissertation examines northeastern Mexico and South Texas as a network of logistical, militarized, and media infrastructures that shape mobility, vulnerability, and everyday life, while also tracing the aesthetic practices through which marginalized communities resist conditions of deterioration and collapse. Other interests include latinx art, urban corporealities, juvenicidio, memory studies, migration, and narcoculture.

Sara Padilla

Partner Organization: Chatos Inhumanos/NYFA

Sara Padilla Vivero (Montelíbano, Córdoba, Colombia) is a writer based in New York City. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing in Spanish from New York University and is pursuing a PhD in Latin American Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center, with research interests in Caribbean literature and cinema. She has worked in media and organizations including the Truth Commission in Colombia. Her work appears in the anthology Pies y Perras (Laguna Libros). She currently teaches Spanish at Hostos Community College.

Ari Reyes

Partner Organization: NuevaYorkinos

Ari Reyes is an MA student in the program in Museum Studies at New York University, whose research and practice is grounded in public education, contemporary art and social movements. Through the incandescence of her Chicago roots, Ari explores capacious formations of language, agency and long truths in Black, Caribbean and Latin American creation and histories. Ari has held education and public programming roles at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The DePaul Art Museum, and the Chicago Academy of Sciences. Ari received a BA in Political Science from DePaul University.

Camila Sofia Rodriguez-Lopez

Partner Organization: Asociación de Documentalistas de Puerto Rico

Camila S. Rodríguez López is a filmmaker, cultural organizer, and multimedia artist based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She holds a BFA in Film & Television Production from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and a BA in Social & Cultural Analysis from NYU. She is currently a Master's candidate in Interactive Media Arts (Low Residency) at NYU. Her work spans filmmaking, cultural programming, and public humanities initiatives through collaborations with the Asociación de Documentalistas de Puerto Rico and the Department of Cultural Development in the Municipality of Caguas. Her most recent short film, Mareas a la Deriva, premiered at the Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia in Tokyo and explores migration, belonging, and the right to remain in Puerto Rico.