Faculty Advisory Committee

The UCLA American Indian Studies Center Faculty Advisory Committee comprises of members from different departments all over the campus. Click on each individual members’ research focus to read more about them.

Members of the FAC are available for contact by the media: Media Contact List.

2023–2024

Faculty Advisory Committee Chair

• 
  Professor Teresa McCarty
  UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies
  Email: teresa.mccarty@ucla.edu
  Research Focus
  Social Research Methodology: Educational-linguistic anthropology, Indigenous/minority education, educational language policy, youth language practices, education equity, ethnographic studies of education, and language endangerment, revitalization, and rights.

Members of the Faculty Advisory Committee

• 
  Professor Stephen Acabado
  Department of Anthropology
  Email: acabado@ucla.edu
  Research Focus
  Historical ecology, landscape archaeology, agricultural systems, settlement patterns, emergent complexity, indigenous peoples; Southeast Asia, Philippines, Guam, Micronesia.
• 
  Associate Professor Randall Akee (Native Hawaiian)
  Department of Public Policy
  Email: rakee@ucla.edu
  Research Focus
  Areas of interest include economic development, ethnicity and development politics, immigration, labor and employment.
• 
  Assistant Professor Tria Blu Wakpa
  Department of World Arts and Culture/Dance
  Email: triabluwakpa@arts.ucla.edu
  Research Focus
  A scholar and practitioner of Indigenous contemporary dance, North American Hand Talk (Indigenous sign language), martial arts, and yoga. Her research combines community-based, Indigenous and feminist methodologies with critical race theories to examine the politics and practices of dance and embodiment historically and contemporarily in educational and carceral institutions for Indigenous peoples.
• 
  Associate Professor Jessica Cattelino
  Department of Anthropology
  Email: jesscatt@anthro.ucla.edu
  Research Focus
  Economy, nature, indigeneity, and settler colonialism. She studies and teaches about sociocultural life in the contemporary United States.




• 
  Associate Professor Oona Paredes
  Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
  Email: oparedes@humnet.ucla.edu
  Research Focus
  She studies the cultural and historical intersections of religion, politics, and identity, especially the ways in which minority “tribal” communities interact with state power and popular culture. Her current field research project looks at traditions of political authority in the modern Philippine state in an indigenous minority group (the Higaunon Lumad) and how this authority articulates with oral traditions (encompassing both customary law and indigenous religion) to reflect acute internal concerns about identity, indigeneity, and cultural heritage preservation.

• 
  Assistant Professor Rodrigo Ranero
  Department of Spanish & Portuguese
  Email: ranero@g.ucla.edu
  Research Focus
  Research interests: Syntax (ellipsis, agreement, linearization), Language revitalization, Language reclamation, Phonology (harmony, long-distance processes), Languages (Mayan, Xinka, Spanish)

• 
  Professor Angela R. Riley (Citizen Potawatomi Nation)
  School of Law
  Email: riley@law.ucla.edu
  Research Focus
  Her research focuses on issues related to indigenous peoples’ rights, with a particular emphasis on cultural property and Native governance.

• 
  Dr. Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, ex officio
  Director of UCLA Center for Mexican Studies and Project Director at the UCLA IRLE-Labor Center
  Email: griverasalgado@ucla.edu
  Research Focus
  He teaches classes on Work, Labor and Social Justice in the US and immigration issues. He also directs the Institute for Transnational Social Change. He has extensive experience as an independent consultant on transnational migration, race and ethnic relations and diversity trainings for large organizations.
• 
  Professor David Shorter
  Department of World Arts and Culture/Dance
  Email: shorter@ucla.edu
  Research Focus
  Epistemology, Ontology, Axiology, history of science, colonialism, paranormal studies, art and social movements, and the ethics of culture contact.
• 
  Rey Soto, ex officio
  Staff Representative
  MACS Data Manager, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology
  Email: reysoto@ucla.edu
• 
  Professor Shannon Speed, ex officio (Chickasaw)
  Director of American Indian Studies Center; Department of Gender Studies and Anthropology
  Email: sspeed@aisc.ucla.edu
  Research Focus
  Legal anthropology; indigenous rights; human rights; indigenous migration; gender; neoliberalism, race and ethnicity; sovereignty/autonomy; activist research methodologies
• 
  Associate Professor Aradhna Tripati (Fijian)
  Institute of Environmental & Sustainability, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences
  Email: atripati@g.ucla.edu
  Research Focus
  She researches and teaches about climate change; the history and dynamics of changing Earth systems including climate, ice sheets, oceans, the water cycle, carbon dioxide levels; tool development; and clumped isotope geochemistry.