HRC Affiliates
The Hispanic Research Center is dedicated to supporting interdisciplinary research and programs that benefit the Hispanic/Latino community. Apply to be an HRC Affiliate Faculty using the link below.
Sybil Francis, Ph.D.
HRC Ambassador
Sybil Francis, Ph.D., is a co-founder of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for the Future of Arizona and serves as its Chair, President & CEO. Dr. Francis brings her passion for creating positive change, her love of Arizona, and her considerable prior national public policy expertise to her leadership of the organization, whose mission is to bring Arizonans together to create a stronger and brighter future for our state, leveraging rigorous public opinion survey research and trusted data for measuring Arizona’s progress to guide its work. Under her leadership, Center for the Future of Arizona has an ambitious and positive agenda focused on where Arizonans agree and where there is opportunity to come together for positive change. Dr. Francis is widely regarded as a visionary leader, serves the community in many capacities, and has received numerous honors. She holds a BA in Chemistry from Oberlin College and a Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT.
Iris Acquarone
Faculty Affiliate
Iris Acquarone is an Assistant Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. Her research examines political representation, electoral politics, and political elites, asking how parties and institutions shape who gets represented in Western democracies, with a focus on historically marginalized groups in Latin America and the United States. She contributes to major data collection and measurement efforts on democracy, party organization, and diversity in representative institutions, and collaborates with academic, government, civil society, and international organizations on racial and gender inequality.
Evan Berry
Faculty Affiliate
Associate Professor in the School of History, Philosophy, and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. His research examines the relationship between religion and the public sphere in contemporary societies, with special attention to the way religious ideas and organizations are mobilized in response to climate change and other global environmental challenges.
Mathew Sandoval, Ph.D.
Faculty Affiliate
Mathew Sandoval is an award-winning professor at ASU’s Barrett, the Honors College. His scholarship focuses on Chicano and Mexican art & culture. He’s a National Endowment for the Humanities “Public Scholar,” and his work has been featured on PBS, NBC Today Show, NPR, Washington Post, LA Times, and Arizona Republic. He also maintains a professional career as a performer, storyteller, and poet.
Vanessa Fonseca Chavez
Faculty Affiliate
Associate Professor of English in the School of Applied Sciences and Arts and the Assistant Vice Provost of the Polytechnic campus at Arizona State University. Her current research focuses on the ways in which rural communities in the Arizona and New Mexico borderlands understand and communicate their sense of place and belonging.
Francisco Pedraza, Ph.D.
Faculty Affiliate
Francisco Pedraza examines political attitude formation and political behavior among racial and ethnic minorities in the United States, and the consequences these portend for public policy.
Antonio Duran, Ph.D.
Faculty Affiliate
Antonio Duran (he/him/él) is an associate professor of higher and postsecondary education in the Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation, as well as a JD student in the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. His research agenda addresses how issues of inequity shape institutions of higher education and what practitioners, faculty, and students do to resist them. He is especially interested in applying frames that expose how intersecting systems of oppression affect multiply minoritized people and their navigation of these social institutions. As a JD student, he strives to explore how to advance civil rights advocacy for multiply minoritized groups across different sociopolitical contexts. Antonio completed his B.A. in English and American Literature at New York University, M.S. in Student Affairs in Higher Education at Miami University, and Ph.D. in Higher Education and Student Affairs at The Ohio State University.
Luis Rivera-Figueroa
Faculty Affiliate
Luis Rivera-Figueroa is a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of English at Arizona State University, Tempe Campus. His book project, tentatively called Reggaetón on the Global Stage: Race, Place, and Mainstream Latinidad, studies how imagined geographies shape ideas of race in the star images of música urbana artists as they become mainstream representations of Latinidad in the US. His work can be found in Caribbean Studies, The Journal of Latin American Communication Research, and in the edited collection The Bad Bunny Enigma: Culture, Resistance, and Uncertainty. In addition, Rivera-Figueroa serves as the secretary for the Latinx Caucus at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.
JoAnna Reyes
Faculty Affiliate
Assistant Professor of Art History and Museum Studies at ASU and adjunct curator of Art of the Americas at the Phoenix Art Museum. A specialist in the visual and material culture of Viceregal Latin America and contemporary Chicana/o America, Reyes’ work explores identity formation, extraction economy, and borderland iconography. Dr. Reyes has held positions at the Getty, LACMA, and the Hispanic Society, and was Aztlán’s book review editor.
Rafael Martínez
Faculty Affiliate
Rafael A. Martínez is an Assistant Professor at Arizona State University (ASU) in Southwest Borderlands whose work focuses on immigrant rights, mixed-status families, and Latinx cultural and historical productions in the southwest borderlands. Dr. Martínez’s award-winning book, Illegalized: Undocumented Youth Movements in the United States, received the 2025 International Latino Book Award Silver Medal for Best Academic Themed Book, College Level, from the University of Arizona Press. The book analyzes the rise of Undocumented Youth Social Movements in the U.S. and immigrant youth’s contributions to the broader Immigrant Rights Movements. Dr. Martínez is the Co-Director of the newly launched Latinx Oral History Lab at ASU.
Angélica J. Afanador-Pujol
Faculty Affiliate
Angélica J. Afanador-Pujol specializes in the art, material culture, and architecture of the Indigenous people of Ancient and Colonial Latin America. Professor Afanador-Pujol’s research interests include Indigenous agency and the social function of art as it intersects with race and ethnic relations, justice, political interests, and consumption in early sixteenth-century Mexico.