Our TEAM
Black. Migration. Houston. is a working group, a community, a collaborative project.
This effort is supported by the Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project, the Digital Research Commons at University of Houston, the Joseph Sydney Werlin Sociology Award to Promote Latin American-US Cultural Understanding and the CLASS Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality.
Lea Hellmueller
Dr. Hellmueller is an Assistant Professor in Journalism at the Valenti School of Communication at the University of Houston Previously, she was a visiting professor at the University of Zurich and a Research Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. Dr. Hellmueller’s research focuses on the media coverage of refugees and migrants, the political polarization of digital news platforms, and right-wing populist journalism. She is the author of The Washington, DC Media Corps in the 21st Century and co-editor of Journalistic Role Performance: Concepts, Contexts, and Methods.
Learn more about Dr. Hellmueller.
Soledad Álvarez Velasco
Dr. Álvarez Velasco is a postdoctoral researcher in the department of Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Houston. She holds a PhD. in Human Geography (King’s College London), a MA in Social Anthropology (Universidad Iberoamericana; Mexico), and a BA in Sociology (Universidad San Francisco de Quito; Ecuador). Her research investigates migration, especially the transit from Ecuador through Mexico and to the United States.
Learn more about Dr. Álvarez Velasco.
Rachel Afi Quinn (Lead)
Dr. Quinn is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies and the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at the University of Houston. Dr. Quinn uses an interdisciplinary methodology to research Black LGBTQ+ identity in the Dominican Republic and new media and digital networks in the African diaspora. Dr. Quinn’s first book, Being La Dominicana: Race and Identity in the Visual Culture of Santo Domingo (2020), in part, explores the way transnational subjects engage with social media networks.
Learn more about Dr. Quinn.
Crysbel (Mariposa) Tejada
Crysbel "Mariposa" Tejada is an Afro-Caribbean queer born and raised between occupied territories of the Lenape nation and the island of Kiskeya (Dominican Republic). Currently, Mariposa has been living and loving on occupied Karankawa territories, so-called Houston, TX. She is a poet, land/water protector, direct action trainer, and community garden coordinator who believes in the importance of cultivating relationships to food and medicine as a means to reconnect to our ancestors.
Learn more about Crysbel "Mariposa" Tejada.
Gabriela Baeza Ventura
Dr. Baeza Ventura is an Associate Professor of Hispanic Literature in the Spanish department at the University of Houston (UH). At UH, she oversees the first-of-its-kind U.S. Latino Digital Humanities Program which is funded by a Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant. Her work has been anthologized in volumes about U.S. Hispanic literature, including Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage, Vol. IV (2001). She is the co-editor of Estudios culturales centroamericanos en el nuevo mileno (2007).
Learn more about Dr. Baeza Ventura.
Zelma Oyarvide Tuthill
Dr. Oyarvide Tuthill is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies program at the University of Houston. Dr. Oyarvide Tuthill uses an intersectional approach to examine health disparities across population groups. Her research seeks to address health inequality across various axis of wellbeing, including physical and mental health status, health behaviors and healthcare utilization.
Learn more about Dr. Oyarvide Tuthill.
Leandra Zarnow
Dr. Zarnow is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History and affiliated faculty in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Houston. Before this appointment, she was an American Council of Learned Societies New Faculty Fellow with the Department of History at Stanford University. She also has been a research affiliate at the Centre for the Study of the United States at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for the United States and the Cold War, New York University. She is a specialist in modern U.S. women’s political, legal, and intellectual history with additional interests in media and transnational studies.
Learn more about Dr. Zarnow.
Keith McNeal
Dr. McNeal is an Associate Professor in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Houston (UH). His first book, Trance and Modernity in the Southern Caribbean (2011), is a comparative study of African and Hindu religions in Trinidad and Tobago and he is working on his first documentary film on Indo-Caribbean mortuary ritual. He is currently completing Queering the Citizen: Dispatches from Trinidad and Tobago, a study of queer globalization and the politics of sexual citizenship in Trinidad and Tobago and its diaspora, including the politics of queer and trans asylum-seeking in Europe. He is Faculty Mentor for the Sunrise Movement at UH and a member of the Houston chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Learn more about Dr. McNeal.
Deborah
De-bo-rah (she/her) is an East African, Southern raised, community organizer. Having had a long held love of building power with community, she co-founded the UndocuBlack Network where she supported deportation defense and building a base of currently and formerly undocumented Black immigrants. Currently, as the national organizer for BLMP, Deborah is supporting building the power of Black LGBTQIA+ migrants to ensure the liberation of all Black people through community-building, political education, creating access to direct services, and organizing across borders. Deborah is a committed to building a thriving community that does not require one person’s subjugation, so that another person survives.
Learn more about Deborah.
Rubén Durán
Rubén Durán was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and immigrated to the U.S. in the mid-1980’s before eventually moving to Houston, Texas. Since 1998, he has worked as a Senior Web and Video Developer, produced numerous instructional web videos for Houston Community College (HCC), and led HCC’s work in Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality education. Rubén established the state-of-the-art XR Labs and Studio at HCC’s Center for Learning Innovation, where he now serves as Director.
Learn more about Rubén Durán.
Claude Willan
Dr. Willian is the Director of Digital Humanities Services at the University of Houston (UH) and Lecturer in the Department of English. As Director, he works with faculty and departments as they develop research projects which incorporates computational methods in the humanities and launch the project’s digital components. His department also collaborates with faculty as they develop pedagogy which incorporates digital methods in their graduate and undergraduate courses.
Learn more about Dr. Willan.
Lynden Marshall
Lynden Marshall is the XR Lab Manager at Houston Community College (HCC). Lynden teaches Immersive Reality at the XR Lab at HCC, where he shares his life experiences and expertise through Virtual Reality (VR) technology. Currently he is working on software that will allow the public to interact with state and federal representatives in real time. He has a background in computer science and holds a M.S. in business. As a software developer, he is committed to creating useful technology for broad audiences.
Learn more about Lynden Marshall.
Linda García Merchant
Linda García Merchant, Ph.D., is the US Latino Digital Humanities (USLDH) Postdoctoral Fellow, at Arte Público Press at the University of Houston. García Merchant is also the co-founder of the Chicana Por Mi Raza Digital Memory Collection (CPMR), an online repository of Chicana/Latina Second Wave Feminist materials and interviews. With over 10,000 assets and 150 filmed interviews, CPMR is considered one of the largest collections of its kind. Her interview with the editors of Chicana Movidas: New Narratives of Activism and Feminism in the Movement Era, “Making Chicana Movidas” is featured in the Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, Spring 2020 special issue on Chicana Feminism.
Learn more about Dr. Linda García Merchant.
Emmanuella Aina
Emmanuella Aina (she/her/hers) is a Research Assistant at the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication and a minor in Women’s Studies from the University of Houston. Emmanuella is currently pursuing her Master of Arts in Mass Communication at the University of Houston.
Learn more about Emmanuella Aina.
Leonardo González
Leonardo González (1987), Chilean playwright, MFA New York University. He has published the books Germany, Nanas, A pension in Yungay, Imago, a moon in the water and She and the pigs. He has obtained the Dramaturgy Prize of the Chilean National Theater (2012), the Municipal Prize of Literature of Santiago (2014) and was the winner of the XVI National Dramaturgy Show (2016), La Rebelión de las Voces Prize (2019), among others distinctions. His plays have been translated into several languages and his works have been performed in Chile, Brazil, England, the United States and Uruguay. He is currently pursuing a doctorate in creative writing in Spanish from the University of Houston, where he research sex work in Latin America and the United States from an patchwork ethnographic perspective.
Learn more about Leonardo Gonzalez.
Xev Love
Xev Love is an art force of nature who dedicates most, if not all, of their creative energy to promoting vulnerability, healing, freedom, and community for marginalized people. Their reference point always goes back to culture and ancestral connections, specifically drawing from the experience of having resisting oppressing and thriving, which they have done. At present, they are involved in many creative disciplines, including music, poetry, photography, and comics. They also have a background in animation and video game design and aspire to expand their storytelling into those mediums. They often do this work with their best friend in a group called (fire emoji) @fiyamoji on IG.
Additionally, they work with Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project (BLMP) as an organizer and data collector. The recent BLMP survey gathers the experiences of Black LGBTQIA+ Migrants and First Gen. people in order to create policies.