UCHRI grants advance Humanities research on campus

UC Santa Cruz’s contributions to the 2024-25 UCHRI cohort underscore the university’s commitment to transformative research that bridges scholarship and advocacy, paving the way for a more equitable, sustainable future.

This year, UC Santa Cruz researchers are advancing cutting-edge projects that tackle critical issues such as antiracist education, environmental resilience, and the intersections of identity and power, with critical funding from the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI).

“By funding these important projects, UCHRI empowers UC Santa Cruz scholars to tackle pressing global challenges, from racial and social justice to climate change and historical memory,” Humanities Dean Jasmine Alinder said. “UC Santa Cruz’s contributions to the 2024-25 UCHRI cohort underscore the university’s commitment to transformative research that bridges scholarship and advocacy, paving the way for a more equitable, sustainable future.”

Here are this year’s UCHRI grant recipients at UCSC: 

Sophia Azeb, Assistant Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
Sophia Azeb’s manuscript, Another Country: Translational Blackness and the Afro-Arab, examines Afro-Arab identities through the lens of migration, race, and cultural exchange. Her work sheds light on transnational racial politics and diaspora identities.

Clara Bergamini, PhD candidate in History
Clara Bergamini’s project, Mapping Imperial Japan's Greatest Calamities: Learning Nation and Enacting Empire Through Disaster, examines how responses to natural disasters shaped Japan’s national and imperial identity. With UCHRI’s support, Bergamini is conducting archival research and creating data visualizations that bridge environmental history and contemporary climate studies.

Vilashini Cooppan, Professor of Literature and Critical Race Studies
Vilashini Cooppan is organizing a landmark conference, Intimacies of Relation: The Autotheoretical Turn, which delves into the growing trend of self-reflective scholarship in literature and theory. Her work connects personal narratives to broader systems of power, with a particular focus on racial justice, fostering multidisciplinary dialogue on identity and resistance.

Carla Hernández Garavito, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
In her project, Reinvention and Colonialism in the Central Andes: The Archaeology of Huarochirí (Peru) through the Inka and Spanish Periods, Hernández Garavito explores indigenous resistance and adaptation during colonial rule, contributing to broader efforts to rethink colonial legacies in anthropology.

Robin Jones, PhD candidate, History of Consciousness
Robin Jones explores dissident communist movements in postcolonial Syria through their responses to authoritarianism and their pursuit of social justice. Supported by a UCHRI dissertation award, Jones’s research contributes to global political theory and Middle Eastern studies by uncovering how independent leftist ideologies shaped resistance movements.

Carlos Martinez, Assistant Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies
Carlos Martinez leads a faculty working group examining reparative practices in medical education. His project, Repair in Times of Reaction: Reparative Humanities Practices for Antiracist Medical Education, explores how the humanities can confront systemic racism in healthcare through critical pedagogy. Martinez and his team aim to reshape medical curricula to address inequities in healthcare outcomes for marginalized communities, laying the groundwork for more equitable healthcare systems.

Jaimie Morse, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Jaimie Morse’s manuscript, Bodies of Evidence: A History of 'Rape Kit' Protocols in U.S. Emergency Nursing and Global Humanitarian Medicine, investigates the evolution of sexual assault forensic protocols and their broader implications for social justice and healthcare equity.

Justin Perez, Assistant Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies

Justin Perez was awarded the UC Underrepresented Scholars Fellowship from the UCHRI. Perez’s forthcoming book Queer Emergent: Scandalous Stories from the Twilight of AIDS in Peru contributes to interdisciplinary dialogue across queer studies, anthropology, and critical global health by examining how the global ambition to “end AIDS” transformed gay and transgender social worlds in urban Amazonian Peru. As part of UCHRI’s initiative to support underrepresented scholars, Perez participates in professionalization workshops and receives mentorship from Professor Cori Hayden of UC Berkeley.