Zoraya Berlanga Aguilar, an incoming doctoral student at Sociology Department, is actively engaged in qualitative research pertaining to the experiences of girls and women involved in gangs in the Rio Grande Valley. Her work seeks to understand the multifaceted impacts of living in a border region, encompassing aspects such as gang association, education, domestic violence, and child welfare. With a bachelor's and master's degree in criminal justice from The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Ms. Berlanga Aguilar conducted her master's thesis research on Intimate Partner Femicide of the Rio Grande Valley: An Exploratory Study. Her research centers on Latinx women, examining issues of intimate partner violence, intimate partner femicide, and social justice within the Latinas of the Rio Grande Valley. Through her research, she aims to advocate for her community and ensure the representation of Latinx individuals in both research and academia, furthering the cause of social justice.

Ruth is from Paraguay and she has an academic and work background in both business administration and humanities (visual cultures). She is a creative writer, and she co-founded a CineClub, bringing film to the people. She was recruited to TAMU by Dr. Eduardo Espina during his Fulbright stay in Paraguay.

Pin-Wen Chen is an incoming Ph.D. student in the Nautical Anthropology Program in the Department of Anthropology. She holds a Master’s in Public History and Cultural Heritage from Trinity College and a Master’s of Maritime and Coastal Archaeology from Aix-Marseille University. Ms. Chen has worked as a junior archaeologist on an underwater site off the shores of the Penghu Islands of Taiwan. For her dissertation research, she intends to explore shipwrecks from the 17^th-19^th centuries in the seas around Taiwan.

As a Ph.D. student in the Department of English at Texas A&M, Fontes is interested in Early Modern Studies, 17th-century English literature and culture, book history, and bibliography. Fontes’ current project explores the relationships among royalist printers, booksellers, and authors during the Commonwealth. Their previous research discussed the printing of Elizabethan authors by royalist booksellers to disseminate courtier values, specifically Fulke Greville’s “Life of Sidney.” Fontes studies the production of Eikon Basilike’s primary booksellers during the 1650s, exploring the dispute over Charles I’s image among royalists. Fontes completed their M.S. in History from the University of Sao Paulo (Brazil) in 2021.

Mark Mallory is an activist, organizer, and interdisciplinary scholar based in Austin, Texas. His diverse research interests include U.S. empire, decolonial politics and thought, mass incarceration, racial capitalism, and the intersection of Black and Native studies. His PhD research examines the role of racialized difference in the history of the Black Seminole diaspora. He received his master's degree in history from the University of Louisiana in 2021 and will begin his PhD study in history at Texas A&M in the fall of 2023.

Rachel Green Miller is a PhD student in the History Department at Texas A&M University. She has a BA in History from Texas A&M. Her area of study is Early Modern England. Her research focuses on the contributions of women in the English and Scottish Protestant Reformation, notably how women participated in and influenced political, cultural, and religious change.

Faith Ebiere Eguolo Odele holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria's premier university, and a master’s degree in media and communication from Pan-Atlantic University, Nigeria. She has worked as an English, Literature and French teacher, a customer service representative, a management consultant, and a technical writer. She wants to explore the intersection of rhetoric, gender, and post-colonialism through her research. She hopes that her research will move the world closer to gender justice. She loves writing and wants her pieces to inspire conversations, learning, hope, love, and life.

Jose Alfredo Ortiz Angeles is a PhD student in the Philosophy Department. He is originally from Portland, OR and completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Oregon where he majored in Philosophy and Romance Languages with a Minor in European Studies. His current research interests are focused on the study of Aesthetics and Epistemology within the context of Latin America and Decolonial Thought.

Bio forthcoming

Jorge has an academic and work background in music as well as architecture, design and art. He is an accomplished singer and creative writer. He has volunteered teaching English to children. He was recruited to TAMU by Dr. Eduardo Espina during his fall 2022 Fulbright stay in Paraguay.

Chenying Weng is a doctoral student in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Texas A&M University. Her research interests include health communication and computational communication. She is passionate about examining the evolution of sentiment on social media, public understanding of health information, and how health information is disseminated among marginalized groups in communities or rural areas, such as the elderly and migrant workers. She is also deeply concerned about women’s health and rights during their medical experiences. In terms of methodology, she is enthusiastic about exploring culture-centered approach, mixed methods and emerging technologies.

Justin Williamson, a former middle school teacher of ten years, is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Department of English. His concentration is African American Literature from the Civil War to the Black Arts Movement. Literary Theory is his primary research area as he’s interested in studying the nature of literature as an art form and the different methods of literary analysis. In addition, Justin is curious about what insight literary theory can provide regarding specific research topics, including the interplay of ideology and identity amidst social and political unrest, representations of parenting in the Black family, and depictions of coping mechanisms in response to historical and generational trauma. His research will focus on authors whose artistic works were seminal cultural markers of their era. Such authors may include Harriet Jacobs, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin.

Zhuldyz Zhumashova is an incoming Ph.D. student in the Cultural Anthropology Program in the Department of Anthropology. She holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from the Al-Farabi Kazakh National University. She plans to study under Dr. Cynthia Werner and to explore the sociocultural integration of repatriated Kazakhs in Kazakhstan for her dissertation research.