Our TEAM
Black. Migration. Houston. is a working group, a community, a collaborative project.
It is made possible through the work of a coalition of scholars and community leaders including Rachel Afi Quinn, Soledad Álvarez Velasco, Lea Hellmueller, Zelma Oyarvide Tuthill, Gabriela Baeza Ventura, Crysbel (Mariposa) Tejada, Deborah, Keith McNeal, Leandra Zarnow, Claude Willan, Maurine Ogbaa, Lynden Marshall, Linda Garcia Merchant, and Rubén Durán.
This is effort is being 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.
Our Team
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.
A polyglot, Dr. Hellmueller previously worked as a journalist in the U.S., South Africa, and Switzerland, where she was raised.
To Teaching BLMP-HOU, she brings her knowledge of worldwide migration data. Additionally, she brings experience writing about migrant communities and writing about the media and social responses to them.
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.
Dr. Álvarez Velasco’s research investigates the nexus between irregularized transit migration, violence, and the capitalist state, particularly in the case of the extended migratory corridor from Ecuador through Mexico to the United States, and focuses on the production of Ecuador as a global space of transit used by Ecuadorean deportees as well as irregularized migrants from Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean Region moving towards the United States. Her research draws from perspectives in critical geography, critical migration and border studies, and feminist political geography. It combines a historical analysis with ethnography.
She is the author of Frontera sur chiapaneca: El muro humano de la volencia: Análisis de la normalización de la violencia hacia los migrantes indocumentados en tránsito [Chiapa’s Southern Border: The Human Wall of Violence] (2016) and co-author of Entre la violencia y la invisibilidad: un análisis de la situación de los niños, niñas y adolescentes ecuatorianos no acompañados en el proceso de migración hacia Estados Unidos [Between Violence and Invisibility. An analysis of Ecuadorian unaccompanied children and adolescents in the migratory process to the U.S.] (2012).
To Teaching BLMP-HOU, she brings her expertise as a feminist geographer and extensive knowledge of the South/Central/U.S. American migratory corridor as well as knowledge of political and economic components of this reality.
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.
Her teaching has focused on globalization, transnational feminisms, and sexuality in the African Diaspora. She seeks to educate students in the areas of anti-Blackness, transnational identity, and gender identity. Her methodology includes critical race theory and trauma-informed methodology. Additionally, Dr. Quinn is the co-founder/leader of the feminist collective South Asian Youth in Houston (SAYHU).
She serves as the lead investigator at Teaching BLMP-HOU. She brings her experience in project management, her extensive networks connecting local, national and transnational organizations serving LGBTQ communities. Additionally, she bring her experience with ethnography. This all informs and shapes our conceptual apparatus and learning and teaching objectives for this public humanities project.
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.
She received her Masters in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas in Austin, where she used creative writing and poetry to tell the stories of women defending their land in Kiskeya from extraction and displacement. She is a hub leader for the Houston chapter of BLMP. Currently, she is at work collecting data on the experiences of Black LGBTQIA+ Migrants and 1st generation folks.
To Teaching BLMP-HOU, she brings extensive experience working with and advocating for BLMP, her experience as a data-collector and of the collaborative process within these unprecedented times.
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.
Dr. Baeza Ventura is an Executive Editor at ArtePublico where she supervises a team of designers, copy editors and proofreaders in the production of some 30 books per year. Additionally, she plans and administers the Digital Humanities services and products of Arte Público Press.
To Teaching BLMP-HOU, she brings her extensive experience with digital humanities.
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.
As a health scholar, her work examines the health experiences of those who hold multiple minority statuses. Her most recent empirical work examines the role of minority stress from stigma and discrimination among LGBTQ+ identifying Black and Latino/a adults. The motivation for her research agenda is not only an academic one but also a personal one. As a former mental health caseworker in Houston, she seeks to merge empirical research with applied action that addresses issues of health inequity among overlooked communities.
To Teaching BLMP-HOU, she brings her experience as a population health researcher on LGBTQ+ migrant communities in the Houston area.
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.
Her first book is Battling Bella: The Protest Politics of Bella Abzug (2019). Her articles have appeared in Law & Social Inquiry, Journal of Policy History, and Feminist Formations. In 2017, she co-directed an NEH Summer Seminar examining the federally funded 1977 National Women’s Conference, and hosted a 40th Anniversary conference at UH commemorating this historic conference. She has offered her thoughts on women in politics in The New Yorker, Axios, and The Houston Chronicle as well as Houston’s NPR, Pacifica Radio, and PBS.
To Teaching BLMP-HOU, she brings her extensive knowledge of legal history, experience developing curriculum around digital archives, and expertise with accessible archives as a public historian.
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.
To Teaching BLMP-HOU, he brings extensive ethnographic work with LGBTQ+ migrants which will inform how we learn and teach trauma, impact and agency.
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.
To Teaching BLMP-HOU, she brings extensive experience as a community organizer and educator.
Joshlyn Thomas
Joshlyn Thomas (she/her/hers) is a second-generation Malayalee Texan. She was born and raised in El Paso and has been living in Houston since 2013. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and a minor in Women’s Studies from the University of Houston. Joshlyn is currently pursuing her Master of Science in Library Science at the University of North Texas as part of the Houston cohort.
Learn more about Joshlyn Thomas.
Joshlyn has been a member of the feminist collective, South Asian Youth of Houston Unite’s (SAYHU), since 2017 and served as a Summer 2020 Intern for its Social Media and Preservation Project. Joshlyn’s research interests include feminist digital humanities and archiving South Asian feminist activists and scholars.
To Teaching BLMP-HOU, she brings her feminist framework as well as a burgeoning expertise with the digital archive and digital humanities.
Maurine Ogbaa
Maurine Ogbaa is a second-generation Nigerian American. Currently, she is a PhD Candidate in English (Literature) at the University of Houston (UH). Her scholarship centers feminist/gender theory, critical race theory, Marxist theory, and African literature. In addition to teaching undergraduate courses in literary theory, literature, and composition, Maurine is committed to bringing literature to people outside of the classroom. At UH, she has hosted a conference about literature and film created by African and African diasporic women and hosted a talk about contemporary queer fiction.
Learn more about Maurine Ogbaa.
Maurine is also a writer. Her work has appeared in Callaloo, Prairie Schooner, AGNI, Third Coast, and The Elephant (Kenya).
To Teaching BLMP-HOU, she brings her African feminist praxis and a committment to social justice which is invested in enfranchisement of all peoples. Additionally, she serves as the webmaster-in-training.
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.
Dr. Willan holds in PhD English from Stanford and previously worked at Princeton's Center for Digital Humanities and Department of English as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. His digital humanities work clusters around network analysis, text mining, and data wrangling/visualization. His interest in text technologies became the topic of the coursebook, Text Technologies: A History, which Dr. Willian co-authored with Dr. Elaine Treharne.
To Teaching BLMP-HOU, he brings extensive experience using computational methods in the literary research, as well as, his experience with collaborative digital humanities’ work.
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.
A skilled digital storyteller, Rubén has co-directed and/or co-edited five award-winning video documentaries: Down in Houston: Bayou City Blues, Texas Zydeco, Colores del Carnaval Dominicano, Cimarrón Spirit and Our Great Day: A Bond with Houston Blues. He has presented at national conferences such as the League for Innovation in the Community College and New Media Consortium.
To Teaching BLMP-HOU, he brings his expertise with integrating multimedia and virtual reality technology into the learning process.
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.
To Teaching BLMP-HOU, he brings his expertise with integrating multimedia and virtual reality technology into the learning process. Additionally, Lynden’s experiences in teaching technology and his perspectives on race in the field of technology will inform our development of multimodal teaching platforms.
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.
García Merchant’s research site, Chicana Diasporic: A Nomadic Journey of the Activist Exiled, highlights the political/ideological journey of the women of the Chicana Caucus of the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC) from 1973 to 1979 alongside the autobiographical experience of living as Mexican and Black during that same period. Acutely aware of the complexities that continue to present themselves through this identity, García Merchant identifies as bicultural and Chicana.
To Teaching BLMP-HOU, García Merchant brings experience in creation of digital archives.
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.
Emmanuella’s research interests include feminist digital humanities and archiving South Asian feminist activists and scholars.
To Teaching BLMP-HOU, she brings her feminist framework as well as a burgeoning expertise with the digital archive and digital humanities.
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.
Leonardo’s research interests include so-called "service jobs", including domestic work, immigrant kitchens, sex work. He is also interested in political events.
To Teaching BLMP-HOU, he brings his international framework as well as a burgeoning expertise with research and digital humanities.
Mural at 3700 Almeda Rd, Houston, TX. Photo by Felipe Galvan on unsplash.
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.
Learn more about Xev Love.
They are an Afro-Indigenous, gender fluid, non-binary individual that was born and raised in the U.S Virgin Islands. They moved to Houston in 2010 and have been fighting assimilation into white, capitalist culture ever since.
To Teaching BLMP-HOU, they bring their experience as a non-binary, gender fluid person who has migrated to Houston, work with the community organizing, and a wealth of creative talent.
Mural at 350 W. 19th St. Houston, TX. Photo by Felipe Galvan on unsplash.