Rubén Morales Forte completed his M.A. in Latin American Studies in May 2020. His main interests are Maya Archaeology and Linguistics. He was also part of the Mellon Fellowship in Community Engagement, where he worked on a project to make Maya inscriptions available to everyone interested in them (Maya Scripta) and partnered to do so with a local museum in Dolores, Petén, Guatemala. In Fall of 2020, he began a PhD in Linguistic Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at Tulane University.

Sedrick Miles holds a Master’s degree in Psychology Research from The New School For Social Research and a B.A. in Psychology from Morehouse College. Both within and outside academia, his work has explored the relationships between cultural identity, race, and social development.

Before joining the Stone Center, Sedrick has spent 15 years designing and conducting action-oriented youth policy training and programming for community based organizations. This included brokering relationships with between national and grassroots organizations collaborating in the areas of K-12 education, Higher Ed, civic education, leadership development, and juvenile justice reform.

Sedrick’s Ph.D. interests focus on the intersections between language, cultural identity, and transnationalism, taking a detailed look at the contemporary identities of Blacks in the diaspora and, in particular, the language interactions of Black American and Black Brazilian traveling communities.

Frida Camille Melgar is a first-year student in the Latin American Studies MA program. She is from El Paso, Texas, and has a BA in Global Studies, with a minor in International Business from St. Edward‘€™s University. Frida is a Fulbright Scholar who participated in the 2019 Binational Business Program in Mexico City. There she worked with the NGO Ashoka, helping social entrepreneurs in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. Her academic interests include international development, immigration studies, and human rights. Frida is fluent in English, Spanish and is also learning Portuguese. She hopes to travel to Brazil and continue to improve her language skills.

Originally from Quito, Ecuador, Martín Mejía is currently a Ph.D. Student in the Latin American Studies program. He received his BA in Political Science at Universidad de Palermo in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He also attained a Master of Arts in Political Theory at University of Essex in England, United Kingdom. Most recently, he worked as a political advisor at the Buenos Aires city legislature and has additionally served as a campaign advisor for a city deputy. Since his undergraduate preparation, Martín has been researching populism, democracy and religion in Latin America. As a result, he has published articles related to populism, religion, International Political economy, democracy and democratization. In addition to his studies, Martín has participated in multiple conferences of Latin American Politics and holds a graduate certificate in Political Communication by the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University. At the Stone Center, he continues to research populism, democracy and religion in South America.

Amy Medvick holds a BA in Jazz Performance awarded jointly by Humber College and Thompson Rivers University, and an MA in ethnomusicology from the University of Toronto, Canada. Her Master’s thesis, entitled “Testing the Boundaries of ‘Women’s Music’: Grupos Femininos in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil,” examines how gender, race, and class are conceptualized at the boundaries of musical groups formed of only or predominantly women. She has performed extensively as a vocalist, flautist, and percussionist in many of Toronto’s Brazilian music acts. Her PhD research will continue her examination of issues of gender, race, and class in musical practice, focusing on the roles of women and gender politics in the Afro-Brazilian drumming tradition of maracatu-nação.

Valerie McGinley has been with the Stone Center since 1995. Her responsibilities include managing the administrative and operational support for all aspects of the Stone Center for Latin American Studies including program planning, budgeting, human resources, space management, and other operations, in addition to overseeing grants, sponsored projects, their fiscal management and compliance, supervising public relations, media initiatives, and the international programs of the Stone Center. Previous to her current position she coordinated educational outreach activities through the Latin American Resource Center. She holds a B.A. in Spanish and a M.Ed. in Second Language Instruction, both from Tulane University, and taught high school Spanish and adult ESL in the metro-New Orleans area.