Cherif Saloum Diatta joined the Stone Center in 2009 as a Fulbright Student Fellow and earned his Ph.D. degree in May 2015. He is a native of Dakar, Senegal, and holds both a B.A. and an M.A. in English as well as a pre-doctoral diploma on Caribbean literature. His pre-doctoral thesis was entitled “Creoleness in Caribbean Literature: The Examples of Dereck Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain and Patrick Chamoiseau’s Solibo Magnificient.” In November of 2007, he received a commendation from the Senegal Head of State for his distinguished scholarship at Cheikh Anta Diop Dakar University. He received his high school teacher training degree in 2008 and has taught at both the Djignabo High School of Ziguinchor and at the University of Ziguinchor in Senegal. Cherif’s research interests include Caribbean literature, African Diaspora studies, gender, creoleness, identity and post-colonialism. In 2013, Cherif received the Stone Center Summer Research Grant, and spent six weeks in Trinidad doing research for his dissertation on Earl Lovelace's literary work. He interviewed Lovelace himself and Prof. Funso Aiyejina, the authority on Lovelace. Cherif’s dissertation was entitled, 'Nation and Diaspora: Identity and Community Politics in the Fiction of Earl Lovelace.' From 2010 to 2013, Cherif presented research papers at several conferences: in Jamaica (the Second International Maroon Conference in Portland), at Tulane University (New Orleans), at the University of Indiana (Bloomington), and at the University of Wisconsin (Stevens Point). In September 27, 2013, Cherif received the NCCLA Student Research Award for his paper, 'Masks of Resistance: Mimicry and Cultural Survival in Earl Lovelace's The Wine of Astonishment” during the North Central Council for Latin Americanists (NCCLA) conference at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. In November 2, 2013, Cherif coordinated the Stone Center Summer Research Grant Symposium.

Originally from Istanbul, Turkey, Asli Berktay earned her B.A. degree from Mount Holyoke College in 2003, double majoring in Critical Social Thought and Spanish with a minor in African Studies. She received her M.A. in History from Central European University in Budapest in 2005. In May 2015, Asli received her Ph.D. in Latin American Studies from Tulane. During her undergraduate career, she studied abroad in both Spain and Senegal. At the Stone Center, Asli has focused her research on the Atlantic slave trade, slavery and post-slavery societies, Atlantic World Studies and race and race relations, particularly in Brazil and West Africa. She is also interested in History, Literature, Cultural Studies and Anthropology of the Caribbean as well as performance studies and critical theory. Asli has participated in numerous national and international conferences to present her research, including the 2009 meeting of the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies in New Orleans and the 2008 International Conference on Storytelling in Lisbon, Portugal. She is also the author of the upcoming book, "The 'Anti-Nationalist Liberation' of Turkish Historiography: The Contributions of Three Turkish Historians to an Understanding of the Byzantine Legacy." Asli has lived throughout Europe, Africa, and the Americas and speaks Turkish, English, French, Greek, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Wolof, Yoruba, Pulaar, and Haitian Creole.

Maile Speakman studied the emergence of United States queer theory in Havana in the early 2000s. Her research interests included queer and feminist cultural production in contemporary Cuba, U.S. Empire, borderlands and contact zones, intellectual history and social theory, queer geographies, and the production of urban space. Maile received a Tinker Foundation grant to conduct ethnographic and archival research in Havana for her Master's thesis, which she successfully defended in the Spring of 2016, thus earning her M.A. degree in Latin American Studies in May 2016.

Alex Santana earned her B.A. in 2014 from New York University, where she received Magna Cum Laude honors and majored in Latin American Studies with a special focus in Art History. In 2012 she studied abroad in Buenos Aires, and in 2013, traveled to São Paulo after receiving an undergraduate research grant from NYU‘€™s College of Arts and Sciences. Her undergraduate honors thesis explored the works of Brazilian modernist painter Tarsila do Amaral and her depictions of indigeneity and blackness. While at NYU, she co-founded the undergraduate peer-review journal Esferas, interned at El Museo del Barrio in Spanish Harlem, and was heavily involved in social justice advocacy groups at NYU’s LGBTQ Student Center.

Originally from Newark, NJ, Alex is a child of immigrants from Spain and the Dominican Republic and plans to eventually work abroad as a museum professional. As an M.A. Student at the Stone Center, she researched diasporic identity, contemporary net art, and digital dissidence in the Americas. Alexandra graduated from Tulane with an M.A. in Latin American Studies in Maay 2016.

Elizabeth is originally from St. Louis, MO and graduated Summa Cum Laude from the Honors College at Missouri State University with Bachelor’s degrees in Latin American Studies, Anthropology, and Spanish. She studied abroad in Guatemala in 2012 where she studied the effects of tourism on native communities, and returned to Guatemala in 2013 and 2014 to work with a women’s textile cooperative called Asociación Mayab’ Ixoqi’ and to help create a GPS map of San Pedro la Laguna, Guatemala. Her senior honors thesis and Departmental Distinction projects in Latin American Studies and Anthropology at Missouri State University focused on iconography in ancient and modern Maya textiles and the concept of the nahualli and human-animal imagery in Mesoamerica, including the Inquisition’s prosecution of witchcraft, sorcery, idolatry, and nahualism (especially focusing on the prosecution of the Aztec people). At the Stone Center, Elizabeth pursued her M.A. with research interests including the study of iconography in Maya textiles through art historical and anthropological analysis of Maya culture, textiles, and epigraphy.

From La Habana, Cuba, Jimena graduated with a B.A. in History from the University of Havana. Her undergraduate thesis was a study of the impact of the Cuban Revolution on the life and work of a woman who was once married to a Comandante. After graduation, Jimena was assigned to complete her post-graduate mandatory social service at the Center Juan Marinello, one of the most important social science research centers in Cuba, working in particular with oral histories and testimonies, and interdisciplinary studies in general. Most recently, she worked at the studio of artist Carlos Garaicoa, where she became interested in the impact of the Revolution, and other 'big' political events on the work of visual artists, mainly in Cuba. Jimena spent her time in the M.A. program exploring this phenomenon and how it related to the migration of artists or their return to their countries. She earned her M.A. in Latin American Studies from Tulane in May 2016.