Mohamed Abumaye is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at California State University, San Marcos. Mohamed’s work centers on the intersections of military and police violence. He investigates the San Diego police department’s unit of counter-terrorism and U.S. military drone attacks in Somalia as transnational circuits of violence that shape Somali refugee flight. Unlike other works on the police, his project centers the role of Somali youth activists in exposing the relationship between U.S. militarism in Somalia and hyper-policing in City Heights, San Diego.
Cinthia Agredano is a third year student at UCSD. She is currently majoring in Political Science Public law with a double minor in African American Studies and Ethnic Studies.
Samuel Rivera Andrade has a BA in Social Anthropology from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Iztapalapa (Mexico) and an MA in Social Anthropology from the Colegio de Michoacán, where he is currently a doctoral student. Two of his long-term interests as an anthropologist and as a photographer are disability and migration. He has presented three photographic shows on these topics, and has completed two theses, Disabled People in Evangelical Groups in Mexico: An Ethnography of the Luz del Mundo Church (BA) and Without Legs, But Still Standing: Migrants Injured During Their Transit Through Mexico.
Cafe X: By Any Beans Necessary (Khea Pollard & Cynthia Ajani) is a worker-owned coffee shop and co-op based in San Diego that enacts equitable and cooperative relationships between its members. Cafe X enriches its member-owners, passing on communal wealth and knowledge and creating a welcoming space for organizing and co-learning. Cafe X will become a permanent venue for coffee, educational support and other community-based events in the near future. They are eager to work with people who are willing to share expertise and increase the equalization of knowledge in the community. Khea Pollard graduated from the University of San Diego with a B.A. in English and Ethnic Studies and an M.A. in Nonprofit Leadership and Management. She held multiple leadership positions during her time at USD and is a recipient of multiple, prestigious awards. Khea is currently the Health and Human Services Policy Advisor for County Supervisor Greg Cox, advising on issues such as child and youth welfare, juvenile safety, safety net and eligibility programs, probation and behavioral health.
Graciela Zamudio Campos is a lawyer specializing in international human rights law and is the founder of Alma Migrante, a civil association dedicated to strategic litigation based in the city of Tijuana. The organization designs and implements justice strategies for migrants with other human rights defenders in the region.
Cog•nate Collective (Misael Diaz + Amy Sanchez Arteaga) develop research projects, public interventions and experimental pedagogical programs in collaboration with communities across the US/Mexico border region. Founded in 2010, their work interrogates the evolution of the border as it is simultaneously erased by neoliberal economic policies and bolstered through increased militarization – tracing the fallout of this incongruence for migrant communities on both sides. Their interdisciplinary projects address issues of citizenship, migration, informal economies and popular culture, arguing for understanding the border not as a bifurcating line, but as a region that expands and contracts with the movement of people and objects. They currently work between Tijuana, MX, Santa Ana, CA, and Los Angeles, CA.
Gaba Cortés has been the Cultural Activities Coordinator of Border Angels Mexico, a binational, pro-migrant association, since 2013. Border Angels teaches art workshops for social inclusion to the migrant community, including international asylum seekers in the north of Mexico and those in repatriation. Gaba has also coordinated fiction film festivals such as Hotel Migrante International Film Festival and the documentary festival, Documentary Station vol.1. Since 2013 she has coordinated film festivals in migrant camps through Cine Móvil Sin Fronteras.
Jhonnatan Curiel is a poet, cultural manager and researcher on youth, art and borders. Originally from Tijuana, he studied Communication at the Autonomous University of Baja California (UABC) in Mexico and has a P.h.D in Social Sciences, Childhood and Youth from the University of Manizales and CINDE in Colombia, where he obtained an honorable mention with the thesis “Geopoetics of living in Tijuana. Footprints of Youth Sensitivity. ” He has published 7 books of poetry. His articles and academic works have been published in Mexico, Brazil and Colombia. He currently works at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte (El Colef) in Tijuana, México.
Ricardo Dominguez is a cofounder of the Electronic Disturbance Theater 1.0 (EDT), a group that developed virtual-sit-in technologies in 1998 in solidarity with the Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico. (https://anthology.rhizome.org/floodnet). With Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0 (Brett Stalbaum, micha cardenas, Amy Sara Carroll, and Elle Mehrmand), he created the Transborder Immigrant Tool (https://tbt.tome.press/), a GPS cellphone safety net tool for crossing the Mexico–US border. He was a Society for the Humanities Fellow at Cornell University (2017–18) and a Rockefeller Fellow (Bellagio Center, Italy) during the summer of 2018. Ricardo is an associate professor in the Visual Arts Department at UCSD.
Veena Dubal is a Professor of Law at the University of California, Hastings College of Law. Her research focuses on the intersection of law, technology and precarious work. She has been cited by the California Supreme Court, and her award-winning scholarship has been published in top-tier law review, peer-reviewed journals and national media outlets. Professor Dubal graduated from Stanford University, and received her J.D. and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. She joined the faculty at UC Hastings in 2015 after a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford.
Kelly Gates is an Associate Professor of Communication at UCSD. Her research examines the politics of surveillance and security in the neoliberal period. Her 2011 book, Our Biometric Future: Facial Recognition Technology and the Culture of Surveillance, explores the effort underway since the 1960s to teach computers to see the human face. The book examines the social construction of automated facial recognition and automated facial expression analysis, focusing on the conceptual and cultural frameworks that are used to think about these technologies, and on the constellations of interests, institutions and social practices that shape their development. At UCSD, she teaches courses on the history of communication research, the Internet and society, the cultural history of photography and visual culture and surveillance and the risk society.
Adriana Huerta has spent her life as an advocate and activist for human, economic and social rights. Born and raised in Mexico City, Adriana completed her basic education in Tijuana before pursuing higher education in San Fernando and San Diego, CA. She has worked as a health educator and program manager for over 17 years in San Diego. She has collaborated with Project Concern International, an organization that operates in over 16 countries to dignify the lives of underserved communities, work on social justice issues and care for high-risk pregnant women in San Diego. Since 2012, Adriana has worked at the Employee Rights Center (ERC), most recently serving as Program Coordinator for their Immigration and Citizenship program called ERC-25. In 2018, she began volunteering at Justice Overcoming Boundaries and currently serves as Chair of the Board.
Mikaiil Hussein emigrated from Somalia to the United States in 1993. He studied computer science in California. For ten years, Mikaiil has led the United Taxi Drivers of San Diego in its fight to end petty corruption and gain drivers’ equitable representation to reform the taxi industry. UTWSD’s 2014 victory of Lifting the Cap on Taxi Permits reshaped power in the industry. Mikaiil is an elected member of the San Diego Labor Council’s Executive Committee, cofounder of the Somali Community Council, and an active member of the AFL-CIO’s Workers Center Advisory Board in Washington, DC.
Amira Jarmakani is Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at San Diego State University. She is the author of An Imperialist Love Story: Desert Romances and the War on Terror (NYU press, 2015). She also authored Imagining Arab Womanhood: The Cultural Mythology of Veils, Harems, and Belly Dancers in the U.S. (Palgrave Macmillan 2008), which won the National Women’s Studies Association Gloria E. Anzaldúa book prize. She is president of the Arab American Studies Association and a Series Advisor for the Critical Arab American Studies Series with Syracuse University Press.
Christopher Magana is a 5th year undergraduate student at UC San Diego double majoring in Global Health and Human Biology. Chris currently works as a research assistant in the UCSD Medical School Department of Family Medicine & Public Health as well as in the Division of Infectious Diseases & Global Public Health.
Aidan McKay is a second-year undergraduate student double majoring in sociology and art history at UCSD. He is passionate about issues relating to organized labor and economic justice, specifically as they relate to workers on UCSD’s campus. To this end, he is involved with a variety of left wing political endeavors on campus including the UCSD Co-ops & Groundwork Books Collective, the UCSD Solidarity Coalition, and United Students Against Sweatshops Local 94.
Lorena Gómez Mostajo is an editor and photographer from Mexico City who holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in Hispanic American Literature from the National Autonomous University in Mexico. She has collaborated with the Mexican photography journal Luna Córnea as an essayist and editor and has written for several Mexican newspapers and magazines such as Reforma, La Tempestad, Picnic and Letras Libres. Lorena is the editor, along with Mara Fortes, of Chris Marker Inmemoria, a volume of essays about the French filmmaker, and of the first translation into Spanish of Amos Vogel’s Film As a Subversive Art, published by Ambulante Documentary Film Festival. Lorena’s artistic work has been included in several collective exhibitions in Mexico, the United States and Germany. She founded Taller California, an independent publishing and printing house that serves the Tijuana-San Diego community.
Aaron Ngan is a second-year, History and Ethnic Studies double major at UCSD. His research fields of interest are: Cambodian diaspora, critique of U.S. imperialism and empire, Critical Refugee Studies, Asian American Studies, memory/post-memory studies, African American and Asian American literature and feminist theory.
Yesenia Padilla grew up in San Francisco as the child of immigrants. They were exposed to the importance of social justice and activism at an early age. They currently serve as the Communications Assistant for Media and Public Relations for Alliance San Diego and for the Southern Border Communities Coalition. They received their Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing with a minor in Political Science from UCSD, where they also organized with AFSCME via Students for Economic Justice. Yesenia has worked with numerous organizations, including ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties, ACLU of California, and Home Start. Yesenia also has volunteered with many local and national organizations. Yesenia has written about food justice and latinidad, and has been published in Complex Magazine and Thought Catalog.
Carlos Pelayo is an Organizer for Rideshare Drivers United, San Diego and a LYFT Driver, with close to 9,500 rides. He is part of the Pacific Media Workers Guild and CWA Local 3952 Guild Freelancers as a Freelance Cyber Journalist. He is President of Labor Council For Latin American Advancement, President of the San Diego & Imperial Counties Chapter AFL-CIO/Change To Win Constituency Group, and delegate for San Diego & Imperial Counties Labor Council.
David Morison Portillo is a Mexican-American living in the United States. A former student of philosophy, he now studies business. David has worked as a business strategist on projects with the Thai Government, the U.S. Department of State, Asylum Access, and other notable organizations. His interests and passions include politics, philosophy, peace building, refugee rights, art, and a bit of everything. He currently works for a local San Diego non-profit with the mission of making world class quality dance affordable and available to all.
Jack Ran is a second year undergraduate student at UCSD, double majoring in political science and anthropology, with a minor in philosophy. He has been an active member in the UCSD labor movement and participates in the United Students Against Sweatshops as well as the UCSD Solidarity Coalition. He is also an active member within the UCSD Cooperatives, acting as a member within Groundwork Books Collective. Jack has helped organize a variety of student-worker demonstrations, including bringing undergraduates to picket lines on campus and coalition building among a variety of social justice organizations.
Alfredo González Reynoso is a writer and scholar. Alfredo studied Language and Hispanic-American Literature (UABC), and holds a master’s degree in Cultural Studies (El Colef). He has published books about border art, film criticism and about the aesthetic deconstruction of Mexican culture in the electronic music scene “ruidosón.” He is currently an Adjunct Professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (UABC), where he teaches about border culture, art criticism and contemporary philosophy. He is the co-founder of the Seminario Permanente de Teoría Contemporánea (SPTC) and the academic journal Círculo Spinoziano.
Siddhi Salunke is a junior at UCSD double majoring in Political Science and Global Health. Her research interests include conflict and health infrastructures, with a focus on how state-perpetrated violence affects health care.
Ramla Sahid is the founder and executive director of the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans (PANA). Ramla oversees the organization’s growth and prominence as a multiracial refugee, Muslim organizing and civic engagement hub. Ramla brings more than a decade of organizing experience to successfully advance state and local initiatives that promote health and racial equity. Ramla has received numerous awards for her work with PANA, including the “2017 Women of the Year Award” by Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, “2017 Global Citizen Award” from the United Nations Association of USA, the “Muslim Community Champion Award” by the Islamic Center of San Diego, and was named the “2017 Voice of the Year” by the Voice of San Diego. She regularly speaks at conferences on the power of building and leveraging community voices to achieve equitable outcomes for families.
Rana A. Sharif is a researcher, educator, community organizer and public servant based in Los Angeles, California. Her research explores the use of new media tools and technologies, including social media, data-driven analytics, and location-based technologies in the context of Palestine. Rana is faculty in the Departments of Communication, Gender and Women’s Studies, and the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program at CSUN. She is an elected official with the City of Los Angeles’ Northridge West Neighborhood Council. Rana is a collective member of the South and West Asia and North Africa (SWANA) Region Radio on KPFK (90.7).
Sara Solaimani is a doctoral candidate in Art History, Theory, and Criticism at UCSD’s Department of Visual Arts. Sara’s research traces performance art from Mexican roots in the United States between the 1960s and 2000. Sara’s work highlights artistic interrogations of geopolitical and metaphorical borders that deconstruct our understanding of space in the age of global capital. In particular, she is interested in using her writing to distinguish the often conflated histories of Chicanx Performance Art of the 1960s and ‘70s, and Border Art in the 1980s and ‘90s. Sara has taught writing, art history, and Chicano studies at UCSD, SDSU, CSUSM, and Mesa College.
Davorn Sisavath is assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and Asian American Studies Program at California State University, Fresno. She received her PhD in Ethnic Studies at UC San Diego, and has received several awards, including the UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship and the UC Human Rights Fellowship. She has published essays in Radical History Review and Journal of Transnational American Studies. Her research interests include: US militarism and war, gendered labor and global political economy, waste and environment, Southeast Asians and Asian American Studies.
Jennifer Terry is Professor and Chair of Gender & Sexuality Studies at UC Irvine, with affiliations in Comparative Literature and Anthropology. Her books include Attachments to War: Biomedical Logics and Violence in Twenty-Firstt-Century America, An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society, and two co-edited anthologies, Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture and Processed Lives: Gender and Technology in Everyday Life. Her interests include: reproductive politics, the history of sexual science, contemporary scientific approaches to the sex lives of animals, love of objects, signature injuries of war, and the relationship between war-making and entertainment. She is currently working on a research project on Demented Doctors/Toxic Legacies of War: Christian Misogyny and the Poisoning of Orange County.
Sergio De La Torre & Chris Treggiari (Sanctuary City Project, https://www.sanctuarycityproject.com/) have been researching and documenting projects related to immigration issues, specifically looking at the Sanctuary City Ordinance, for the past 10 years. Their artistic practice strives to investigate how art can enter the public realm in a way that can connect wide ranges of people and neighborhoods in a variety of communities. The collective has received grants and commissions for several foundations including the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Vachon Gallery at Seattle University, Kala Art Institute and For-Site Foundation. Both Sergio and Chris are based in the Bay Area.
Suchitra Vijayan is a Barrister-at-law, writer and photographer whose work crosses research, visual practice and human rights in South Asia and globally. She is the founder and executive director of The Polis Project (https://thepolisproject.com/), a hybrid research and journalism organization that amplifies diverse perspectives from indigenous communities around the world who are affected by crisis and conflict. As an attorney, Suchitra has worked for the United Nations war crimes tribunal for Yugoslavia and Rwanda. She co-founded and was the Legal Director of Resettlement Legal Aid Project, Cairo that gives legal aid for Iraqi refugees. Her writings and photographs have appeared in GQ, Boston Review, Washington, Foreign Policy, NPR, Huffington Post, NBC, The Guardian, among others. Her book Midnight’s Border is forthcoming.
Mael Vizcarra is a filmmaker and anthropologist from Tijuana, Mexico. She has a doctorate in Interdisciplinary Studies from the Institute of Liberal Arts at Emory University. She studies the everyday lives of working-class people along the Mexico-U.S. border through filmmaking. Her most recent documentary, La Línea, focuses on the day-to-day work of street vendors at the border checkpoint of San Ysidro in Tijuana.
Kalindi Vora is Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at UC Davis, and Director of the Feminist Research Institute. Her first book, Life Support: Biocapital and the New History of Outsourced Labor, takes up questions of technology, colonialism and raced and gendered labor under globalization. Her second book, with Neda Atanasoski, Surrogate Humanity (Duke UP, 2019) examines the racial and gendered politics of robotics and artificial intelligence. Her current work includes feminist critique of STEM research design and pedagogy (support by NSF IGE), the book Technoprecarious (Goldsmiths Press/UMP) with the Precarity Lab at University of Michigan, and The Pocket Guide to Feminist Science as part of the STAR Collab.
Rihan Yeh is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at UCSD. She studies the effects of the Mexico-US border on public life in Tijuana; her first book is titled Passing: Two Publics in a Mexican Border City (2018).