Kate Mower (they/them) graduated in 2024 with a PhD from the University of California Riverside in history of science and feminist science and technology studies (STS). Their research centers biopolitics, or how societies exert political control over (certain) bodies. They consider how legal assignments of gender/sex, race, and ethnic identity privilege or hinder those that inhabit different bodies and how these assignments have historically impacted citizenship status and nationality in Romania. They use the history of archaeology and bioarchaeology (the study of human remains) to unpack their research questions. As an archaeologist, they excavate at Histria, Romania with the University of Bucharest and the Museum of National History and Archaeology in Constanta (MINAC). Their dissertation was supported by a dual-country Fulbright research scholar grant (Bulgaria and Romania) and American Councils Title VIII research scholar grant.

Ed A. Muñoz is an associate professor of ethnic studies and an adjunct associate professor of sociology. In general, his research expertise deals with the Latinx experience in the Inter-Rocky Mountain region of the United States. His criminal justice research agenda examines how racialization processes impact criminal justice outcomes for racial/ethnic minority populations. He is currently examining the effectiveness of Salt Lake Peer Court on youth recidivism. A longer-term project is a socio-historical analysis on the construction of Latinidad in the Inter-Rocky Mountain West dating from the 16th century and into the 21st century.

Ella Myers is professor of gender studies and political science and an award-winning teacher of political theory and feminist. Her research focuses on the practices, institutions and norms that enable – or thwart – the ability of ordinary people to shape the conditions of their lives, with special attention paid to the conditions of racial capitalism. Dr. Myers' most recent book, "The Gratifications of Whiteness: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Enduring Rewards of Antiblackness" (Oxford University Press, 2022) is the first book-length study of Du Bois’s complex analysis of American whiteness. Myers shows that Du Bois’s account – which conceptualized the varied economic, psychic, affective, and existential rewards that attended the classification “white” in the early 20th century – continues to offer critical purchase on the present. The book explores both the tenacity of anti-Black racism in the U.S. and ongoing activist struggles to end white supremacy.

Dr. Magaly Ordoñez is a Latinx Sexualities Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Utah. They completed their PhD in Feminist Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities with minors in Heritage Studies and Public History, and Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Their dissertation, Cannabis Spaces, Relationships, and Relajos, researched the experiences of Chicanx and Latinx LGBTQ+ communities that have contributed to cannabis cultural and political histories through feminist archival, ethnographic, and mixed qualitative methodologies with emphasis on gendered and racialized social structures. Their research examines historical and contemporary cannabis culture in Los Angeles (L.A.), California, to understand how queer of color cannabis histories, relations, and spaces refuse subversion to a capitalist cannabis industry by centering care, cannabis education, and political advocacy. It argues that Chicanx/Latinx communities across L.A. foster landscapes of political and cultural resistance within and beyond the limits of cannabis legality. Dr. Ordoñez is originally from Los Angeles, California and was raised in the immigrant neighborhoods of Westlake/MacArthurPark, Pico-Union, and Koreatown. Aside from academics, they enjoy hiking, camping, trying new plant-based recipes, and playing MarioKart.

Wanda S. Pillow is a professor in gender studies and offers courses in qualitative research methods; gender, race and sexuality studies; race, feminism and poststructural and theories; and educational policy. Her work focuses on intersectional analyses of the relationship between subjectivity and representation (historically, legally, discursively and textually) and on tracing what this means and looks like methodologically and theoretically across cultural productions, policy, and embodied praxis. Resulting projects include tracing colonial relations of gender, race and sexuality through Sacajawea and York of the 1804-1806 Corps of Discovery expedition; methodological essays; and ongoing participation in research and efforts for the educational rights of young mothers. Professor Pillow is committed to mentoring students and emerging scholars and participates in several national professional organizations. She is also a co-editor of Frontiers–A Journal of Women Studies.

Susie Porter, a professor in history and gender studies, teaches Mexican, Latin American, and community-engaged history. Dr. Porter’s research explores the ways work and class identities shape individual experiences and societal change. In research on telephone operators, secretaries, factory workers, and street vendors, Porter shows that at the heart of the Mexican labor movement there was also a movement for women’s social, cultural, and civil rights. These women, many of them working mothers, developed a critique of gender inequality and sexual exploitation both within and outside of the workplace.

For more than 10 years, she has worked in community organizing and is a co-founder of the Spanish-language Westside Leadership Institute. Porter is series editor for Confluencias, University of Nebraska Press and director of the Center for Latin American Studies.

Dr. Sarah Projansky is associate vice president for faculty on main campus. She holds a joint-appointment as professor of film & media arts and of gender studies, and is an adjunct professor of communication. Sarah has published two books, "Spectacular Girls: Media Fascination and Celebrity Culture" and "Watching Rape: Film and Television in Postfeminist Culture," and she is co-editor of Enterprise Zones: Critical Positions on Star Trek. She also has published articles on feminist and Asian American independent cinema, news media and Title IX, and feminist media studies. Sarah’s courses include film theory, introduction to TV, gender and contemporary issues, girl films, film and television stars, and feminist girls’ media studies. She has been a member of numerous dissertation committees and MFA committees, and she has directed many undergraduate honors theses.

Dr. Angela L. Robinson (Wito clan of Chuuk, Micronesia) researches within the fields of affect studies, Indigenous studies, and performance studies. Currently, she is the inaugural Mellon-Pasifika Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Utah. She received her Ph.D. in Gender Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2019. Her current book project, Performing the Pacific: Affect, Sociality, and Sovereignty, examines affective regimes of colonialism in Oceania and the ways in which Indigenous performance articulates alternative forms of sociality and sovereignty through ontologies of corporeality. Her forthcoming article, “Of Monsters and Mothers: Affective Climates and Human-Nonhuman Sociality,” will appear in the August 2020 issue of The Contemporary Pacific. She currently serves as the national representative of Micronesia for the Federation of International Dance Festivals.

Lisabeth Marie Santana (she/they) is a queer Chicana researcher who received her M.S. and Ph.D in physics from the University of Pittsburgh. She completed her B.S. in physics at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Santana’s dissertation focused on equity in physics, including investigations of types of students who took and/or repeated introductory physics courses and women’s experiences in undergraduate and graduate physics programs. Their qualitative work utilized critical frameworks such as Feminist Standpoint Theory, Critical Race Theory, and Domains of Power to analyze how students’ gender and/or racial identity impacted how they navigated physics (e.g. interactions with peers and faculty).

Angela Marie Smith is an associate professor of English and gender studies, director of the Disability Studies Program, and co-chair of the Universal Design and Access Committee at the University of Utah. Her research examines disability representation and affects in cinema, television, and online media. She is the author of "Hideous Progeny: Disability, Eugenics, and Classic Horror Cinema" (Columbia University Press, 2012). She has also published in journals Literature and Medicine, Post Script, and Antipodes and in edited collections "The Matter of Disability" (2019), "Monsters: A Companion" (2020), "Embodying Contagion" (2021), "The Routledge Companion to Gender and Affect "(2022), and "The Evolution of Horror in the 21st Century" (2023).

In 2003, Dr. William Smith was awarded the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship to further develop his theoretical concept of Racial Battle Fatigue. Racial Battle Fatigue is an interdisciplinary theoretical framework that provides a clearer method for understanding the race-related experiences of People of Color. In general, Racial Battle Fatigue explains how the social environment (e.g., institutions, policies, practices, traditions, groups and individuals) perpetuates race-related stressors that adversely affect the health and academic achievement of Students of Color and the health, professional productivity, and retention among Faculty of Color. Professor Smith’s additional research interests are inter-ethnic relations, racial attitudes, racial identity & socialization, academic colonialism, affirmative action attitudes, and the impact of student diversity on university and college campuses.

Majd Subih has a Ph.D. in education, with a specialization in sociocultural and community-based approaches, from the School of Education at the University of Delaware. Dr. Subih's dissertation considers the intersectionality of disability (including sensory, mental, and illness-related impairments), religion (specifically Islam), ethnicity (pertaining to Arab Americans), and gender (encompassing females, males, and nonbinary individuals) in the United States. Specifically, her research explores how Arab American Muslims with disabilities make sense of their disability identity. She is originally from Jordan and completed her undergraduate degree in modern languages (with a focus on Spanish and English) at the University of Jordan, with a specialization in literature and language pedagogy. She has two master’s degrees from Villanova University, in Hispanic Studies and Teacher Leadership.

Thomas Swensen is an assistant professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Utah and was the 2017-2018 Katrin H. Lamon fellowship residential scholar at the School for Advanced Research, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Born and raised in the Kodiak Archipelago and an original shareholder in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement corporations Koniag, Inc., and Leisnoi, Inc., Swensen is enrolled in the federally recognized Tangirnaq native village – a.k.a. the Woody Island tribe – and serves the Alutiiq on the board of directors of the Koniag education foundation, an organization that promotes the educational goals and economy of the Koniag Alutiiq and their descendants. Swensen’s study focuses on Native American and Western Hemispheric history, law, art, and literature and has an interest in punk and urban studies.

As Assistant Vice President for Faculty Support, Myra Washington works with departments and colleges across University of Utah to ensure attention to best practices in all aspects of the faculty hiring process—starting with hiring plans and recruitment and continuing through campus visits and onboarding. Additionally, Myra develops and oversees programs that support and mentor faculty to boost retention, navigate faculty review processes – particularly promotion and tenure, and navigate life in Utah.

She has substantial experience with the design and leadership of professional development and support organizations for faculty of color, including the Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies, where she is a founding member.

Myra received her doctorate in Communications Research from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2012. Her research includes analyses of race and gender in popular culture—across television, film, celebrity culture, and digital media. She taught communication and journalism at the University of New Mexico for eight years. She is currently an associate professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Utah.

Su Yin Htun, PhD, is a Research Associate in Ethnic Studies at the University of Utah with the School of Cultural and Social Transformation. She has been a US-ASEAN Fulbright scholar, won the Institute of International Education Scholar Rescue Fund. She is a Reconceptualizing Exile Scholar from the Global Campus Human Rights, the largest network of 100 universities that focuses on human rights education in higher education. She helped establish human rights education in Myanmar's universities. She specializes in human rights law and teaches constitutional law. Citizenship and statelessness issues were Dr. Su Yin Htun's most well-known worldwide papers. Her papers titled “Legal Aspects of the Right to Nationality Pursuant to Myanmar Citizenship Law” and “The effectiveness of ASEAN cooperation in ending regional statelessness” provide a historical overview and legal analysis of citizenship laws in Myanmar through a human rights lens, as well as suggestions for legal reforms to address statelessness in Myanmar and ASEAN's engagement with international human rights laws on statelessness. The military junta sought her for her voluntary participation in the Civil Disobedience Movement, so she fled to the US in 2024 as a refugee. She is still contributing at the International Affairs Department of the Ministry of Education under Myanmar's National Unity Government. Su’s appointment is thanks to the partnership with Global Campus of Human Rights, IIE (Institute of International Education), Ethnic Studies, and the S.J. Quinney College of Law.

Kilo Zamora is known for his skills to increase people's capacity for social change. With this ability, Zamora leads his classes with a focus on implementing their scholarship outside the classroom by applying community-engaged research and critical theories to decrease inequity gaps. Off-campus, Zamora is a national consultant for cities, nonprofits, and education systems and has served with mayoral transition teams, the Salt Lake City Human Rights Commission, and The Inclusion Center for Community and Justice. For his work off and on campus, Zamora has received multiple awards including the University of Utah’s faculty recognition award, School of Social Work’s Teacher of the Year, Pete Suazo Social Justice Award, Equality Utah Award, Utah Education Association Award, Utah Martin Luther King Award, Southern Utah University Humanitarian Award, and University of Utah’s Outstanding Young Alumni Award.