Grad Student - CRNAI

Cristina Mendez

Cristina S. Méndez (she/ella) is a Chicana educator, scholar, and poet. She is a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley School of Education and a member of the interdisciplinary designated emphasis program in Indigenous Language Revitalization. Her research focuses on the lived experiences and sense-making of Maya Mam women lideresas who organize for the vitality of their language and culture and for the wellbeing of their communities across the United States, México, and Guatemala. Through her research and other collaborations, Cristina is committed to centering...

Jesse (Jesus) Nazario

Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley

Jimena Perez

Geography, UC Berkeley

Jimena Perez is a community-engaged scholar, NSF GRFP Fellow, and Geography Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley. Her dissertation explores the L.A. River—known to the Tongva as paayme paxaayt—as a site of memory, resistance, and repair. Raised in Southeast Los Angeles, she witnessed the River’s confinement in concrete, mirroring the struggles of nearby working-class communities. Rather than centering loss, her ethnographic research highlights the visions and practices of residents across L.A. County who challenge dominant planning narratives and reimagine infrastructure. Jimena’s...

Ruth Rouvier

Linguistics, UC Berkeley

Henry Sales

School of Education, UC Berkeley

Henry Leonel Sales Hernández is an Indigenous Maya Mam educator, researcher, and doctoral student in the School of Education at UC Berkeley. Born and raised in San Juan Atitán, Guatemala, and currently living in Oakland, California, his work is rooted in language justice, cultural affirmation, and educational equity. His research and work focuses on the revitalization of the Mam language through early childhood education, storytelling, and community-based practices. Drawing on ethnographic methods, Henry studies how Mam toddlers, youth, and their families in Oakland engage with books and...

Alexii Sigona

Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, UC Berkeley

Danny Sosa Aguilar

Anthropology,  UC Berkeley

Annalise Taylor

Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, UC Berkeley

Rosario Torres

Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, UC Berkeley

Carlotta Wright de la Cal

History, UC Berkeley

Carlotta Wright de la Cal is a PhD Candidate in History at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research lies at the intersection of Indigenous history, labor control, and immigration policy in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Her dissertation project examines how railroad corporations reshaped mobility, labor systems, and racialized border control across the region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The project centers transborder Indigenous communities—particularly Yaqui and Mayo—who incorporated railroad work into community-building and resistance...