Staff Listing
Staff
Louis A. Pérez, Jr.
Director of Institute for the Study of Americas and Professor of History
Global Education Center 3202
919-962-6880
perez@email.unc.edu
Louis A. Pérez, Jr. is the J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of History and the Director of ISA. His most recent books include Rice in the Time of Sugar: The Political Economy of Food in Cuba (2019) and Intimations of Modernity: Civil Culture in Nineteenth-Century Cuba (2017) Pérez's principal teaching fields include twentieth-century Latin America, the Caribbean, and Cuba. Research interests center on the nineteenth and twentieth-century Caribbean, with an emphasis on Cuba.
Beatriz Riefkohl Muñiz
Executive Director and Director of Undergraduate Study
Global Education Center 3203
919-962-2418
riefkohl@email.unc.edu
Beatriz Riefkohl Muñiz joined ISA in 2005 after nearly a decade working to strengthen Latin American studies at the University of Chicago and Yale University. She graduated from the University of Puerto Rico with a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences degree in Anthropology. At ISA, she advises students on academic and funding opportunities, manages and develops grant and endowment programs, and oversees the activities of the UNC and Duke Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies. She volunteers with local organizations working to provide opportunities to Latin American immigrants.
Hannah Gill
Associate Director, Director of Latino Migration Project
Global Education Center 3205
919-962-5453
hgill@email.unc.edu
Hannah Gill is an anthropologist and oral historian with a specialization in Latin American and Caribbean migration studies. She is Associate Director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas and oversees the Latino Migration Project. She received a DPhil in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford, England and a BA from UNC Chapel Hill.
Joanna Shuett
Department Manager
Global Education Center 3206
919-962-6879
joshuett@email.unc.edu
Joanna Shuett is from Melbourne, Florida, and graduated from Florida Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration, where she also worked a little over a decade in administrative roles. She moved to the Chapel Hill area in 2006, and after working many years in the operations and finance areas within the manufacturing industry, she realized her passion was working in academia and wanted to join UNC to provide support to those making improvements both locally and globally through research and education. As the Department Manager, she coordinates administrative, financial, and personnel duties, and is especially enthusiastic about supporting the faculty, staff and students in their pursuit of knowledge of the Latin American experience in the Western Hemisphere.
Brianna Gilmore
Program Associate
Global Education Center 3219
919-966-1484
briannag@live.unc.edu
After graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill with a degree in Latin American Studies with a double minor in Hispanic Studies and Geography, she continued creating promotional material for events, managing the ISA website, social media accounts, and the Latin American Film Library. In addition to her studies, she volunteered in Ecuador with Global Citizen Year working with indigenous peoples, and studied sustainable development with the School for Field Studies in Costa Rica. In January 2021, she transitioned to primarily working in the Building Integrated Communities (BIC) initiative under the Latino Migration Project. Through her work with Building Integrated Communities, she has organized and facilitated community and civic meetings with the City of Sanford’s Equity Task Force and with various stakeholders in the City of Washington, culminating in community assessments, local government recommendation reports, and policy changes. She has completed Relational Leadership training through the UNC School of Medicine, digital accessibility training with UNC's Digital Accessibility Office, and most recently UndocuCarolina's ally training. She looks forward to continuing her work with the Institute for the Study of the Americas as a Program Associate.
Andreina Malki
Film Library Assistant
Global Education Center 3218
amalki@email.unc.edu
Andreina Malki is a doctoral student in Geography interested in space, power, and questions of legality. Her dissertation will address the spatial and legal dimensions of the corporate-state collaboration as it manifests in for-profit non-citizen detention and incarceration in the United States. Andreina earned a MA degree in Global Studies from UNC-CH, and her thesis examined the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism codified in bilateral investment treaties in Latin America. Before starting graduate research Andreina directed a leadership institute with farmworker youth in rural North Carolina at Student Action with Farmworkers (Durham, NC). Prior to that, she worked as International Outreach Coordinator at the Via College of Osteopathic Medicine with rural communities in Central America and the Caribbean. Andreina has been involved with local activist groups in the Triangle area in North Carolina.
Daniel Velásquez
Community Documentarian
Global Education Center 3219
dvelasq@live.unc.edu
Daniel Velásquez is a Ph.D Candidate in History at UNC and holds a Master’s degree in Public History from the University of Central Florida. His research interests center on the migratory and commercial links between Latin America and the US South, with an emphasis on eighteenth and nineteenth century Mexico-Louisiana-Florida connections. He has conducted archival research in the United States, Mexico, Spain, and the United Kingdom, and has been involved in numerous projects ranging from historic preservation to history podcast production. Since 2021, he also serves his local community as a member of the Mebane Racial Equity Advisory Council. As Community Documentarian at ISA, he looks forward to conducting oral histories with Latinx leaders across North Carolina and working with the Building Integrated Communities and New Roots programs.