FMURF Recipients

Faculty-Mentored Undergraduate Research Fellowship (FMURF) 

Latinx Research Center, UC Berkeley
Academic Year 2025-2026 

We are excited to jump-start our 2025-2026 Latinx Research Center (LRC) Faculty-Mentored Undergraduate Research Fellowship (FMURF). The program runs from Fall 2025 through Summer 2026, and pairs faculty with undergraduate students advancing research in US Latinx Studies across the liberal arts, sciences, professional schools, and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

Throughout the program, faculty mentors will be expected to meet with student fellows on a biweekly basis at a minimum, and student fellows will be expected to assist their faculty mentor on one or more research projects to develop research skills, critical thinking, and intellectual creativity.

At the end of the Spring 2026 semester, faculty-student teams will publicly present their research at the End-of-Academic Year Symposium hosted by the LRC and will be required to submit a 5- page paper or capstone project by Summer 2026.

Below are the AY 2025-2026 FMURF Recipients, along with a brief overview of their research projects. 

Associate Professor of English and of Spanish and Portuguese

Raúl Coronado

Undergraduate Research Fellow: Mia Aguilar

Raúl Coronado is an Associate Professor of English and of Spanish and Portuguese at UC Berkeley.  His teaching and research interests are in Latina/o literary and intellectual history, from the colonial period to the 1940s. 

Project Title: Nineteenth-Century Latinx Private Writing Project

... more details coming soon!

Continuing Lecturer of Spanish Linguistics

Jhonni Carr 

Undergraduate Research Fellow: María Marisela Navarro Macías

Dr. Jhonni Carr holds a PhD in Hispanic Linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles. She teaches in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Berkeley. Specializing in Spanish Sociolinguistics, she investigates linguistic social justice and the power dynamics of displayed languages in the public space of California, Mexico, and Brazil. 

Project Title: Voice Recognition Bias Study

... more details coming soon!

Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology

Armando Lara-Millán

Undergraduate Research Fellow: Julio Cedillo 

Armando Lara-Millán is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at UC Berkeley. He studies political economy in sociology. For him that means studying changing markets and their enabling institutions, but in such a way that centers history, culture/knowledge, and power. Lara-Millán is an ethnographer of well-positioned organizations and a historian of the fields those organizations shape. 

Project Title: Ideas and the Return of the Real Economy

... more details coming soon!

Associate Professor of Chicanx/Latinx Studies

Nicholas Vargas 

Undergraduate Research Fellow: Alex Hernandez Avila

Nicholas Vargas is an Associate Professor of Chicanx/Latinx Studies in the Department Ethnic Studies. Vargas' research is situated primarily in the social sciences with foci on ethnoracial classification, identification, and stratification. Methodologically, his core aim is to think critically about the utility of race data for identifying and rectifying societal, systemic, and structural racisms.

Project Title: Latinx Studies and Landscapes Project

... more details coming soon!

Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies

Christian Paiz 

Undergraduate Research Fellow: Brizeida Cruz Hernandez

Christian Paiz is a social historian with research interests in Chicanx/Latinx and Labor Studies, and in U.S. social movements in the 20th century. 

Project Title: UFW Oral Histories (Coachella Valley)

... more details coming soon!

Assistant Professor at the Berkeley School of Education

Dana Miller-Cotto

Undergraduate Research Fellow: Abigail Villa

Dana Miller-Cotto is an Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Education. Dr. Miller-Cotto has used approaches from cognitive science, sociology, and educational psychology to study predictors of educational inequity, particularly as they relate to marginalized students learning math. A significant portion of her research focuses on individual differences in math performance for Black and Latine students living in poverty who generally demonstrate lower performance in mathematics in the United States.

Project Title: Executive Function and Racial Identity Study

... more details coming soon!

Professor of Earth & Planetary Science

Francis Macdonald

Undergraduate Research Fellow: Lena Felicitas Hernandez

Francis Macdonald's research focuses on the interactions of tectonics, climate, and biological evolution through Earth history. This work begins with geological mapping, and uses stratigraphic analysis, isotope geochemistry, geochronology, paleomagnetism, and paleontology to reconstruct paleoenvironments and tectonic histories.

Project Title: Jurassic Coast Range Ophiolite & Latinx STEM Outreach

... more details coming soon!

Associate Professor of Sociology

Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz

Undergraduate Research Fellow: Lynda Otero

Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz was born and raised in Chicago. His research and teaching explore the politics of race, knowledge, and temporality, primarily in Latinx communities and movements. Michael's current research focuses on Puerto Rican diasporic anticolonialism and state repression, demographic imaginaries and population politics, race and political trust, and Du Boisian sociology.

Project Title: Puerto Rico Data Sovereignty Project

... more details coming soon!

Lecturer of Ethnic Studies

Juan G. Berumen

Undergraduate Research Fellow: Jolene Anderson

Juan G. Berumen examines the agency and resiliency of historically marginalized students and their communities to navigate and confront systemic inequities stemming from a complex interplay of political, economic, and social factors. Leveraging his background as an educator, practitioner, and policy advocate, he underscores the pivotal role of policy in structuring educational access, opportunities, and outcomes for Black and Brown students, particularly in relation to income, race, and geography.

Project Title: Comparative Freedom Schools Project

... more details coming soon!

Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies

Liliana V. Rodriguez

Undergraduate Research Fellow: Ghandy Jimenez

Liliana V Rodriguez is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. Her areas of interest include Latina/o sociology, international migration, immigrant youth, ethnographic research methods, and race and ethnicity studies. Her current work centers on the experiences of adolescent arrivals as they navigate life in the United States during contested political times. 

Project Title: Mexican Americans and the 100-Mile Border Enforcement Zone

... more details coming soon!

Associate Professor of Hispanic and Romance Linguistics

Justin Davidson

Undergraduate Research Fellow: Parsa Ansari

Justin Davidson is an Associate Professor of Hispanic and Romance Linguistics in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. His main research agenda is guided by questions that primarily address language variation and language change in contact situations, specifically as linked to the empirical assessment of linguistic influence (via language contact), incorporating a variety of linguistic frameworks and methodologies. 

Project Title: Multilingual Hispanic Speech in California (MuHSiC)

... more details coming soon!

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA)

BAMPFA

Undergraduate Research Fellow: Diana Martinez Ruiz

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) ignites cultural change for a more inclusive and artistic world. BAMPFA has been uniquely dedicated to art and film since 1970, with international programming that is locally connected and globally relevant. It holds more than 25,000 artworks and 18,000 films and videos in its collection, with particular strengths in modern and contemporary art and historical Chinese painting, as well as the world’s largest collection of African American quilts. As part of the University of California, Berkeley, BAMPFA is committed to artistic diversity through its robust slate of art exhibitions, film screenings, artist talks, live performances, and educational programs that shed new light on the art of the past and connect audiences with leading filmmakers and artists of our time. BAMPFA sits on the edge of campus and downtown Berkeley, where it welcomes visitors from across and beyond the Bay Area in a repurposed building designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

... more details coming soon!