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Affiliated Faculty

WISER faculty come from a range of disciplines and research interests. They provide valuable contributions in the study of race, ethnicity, and sexuality, as well as mentorship of future scholars in various fields.

Manish Chalana

Dr. Manish Chalana holds a doctorate in Design and Planning from the University of Colorado. He also holds a masters in Landscape Architecture from the Pennsylvania State University and masters in Architecture from the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, India. Dr. Chalana's research focuses on international and multicultural preservation and planning. He is also interested in immigration of South Asians to North America, and their settlement and network patterns. Additional interests include the use of urban open spaces by marginalized communities and the displacement of disadvantaged communities as a result of gentrification in urban areas.

Frances Contreras

Assistant Professor, College of Education
Research interests: affirmative action in higher education, Latinas/os in Ph.D. programs
Office Location: M204 Miller
eMail: frances@u.washington.edu

Dr. Contreras presently researches issues of equity and access for underrepresented student in the education pipeline. She recieved her B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1994, her M.Ed. at Harvard University in 1995, and her Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2003. She addresses transition between K-12 and higher education, community college transfer, faculty diversity, affirmative action in higher education, and the role of the public policy arena in higher education access for underserved students of color. In addition to her research and teaching Dr. Contreras serves on the Boards of the Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy, LEAP, California Tomorrow, and the Chicana/Latino Foundation.

Gloria Coronado, PhD

Dr. Coronado is a Hispanic epidemiologist who received her undergraduate training at Stanford University. She works as an Assistant Member for the Cancer Prevention Program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Dr. Coronad is a Co-investigator for several community-based intervention studies taking place in Eastern Washington and New Mexico. She serves as the Principal Investigator on two National Cancer Institute-funded investigations; Increasing Colorectal Screening in Minorities and ESL Curriculum for HBV Testing in Chinese Americans. She has co-authored several publications from qualitative research conducted in Hispanic communities and has long history of mentoring undergraduate and graduate students. She was recognized as a Young Hispanic Leader by the Embassy of Spain. She serves as a board member on two local organizations: CASA Latina and Planned Parenthood of Western Washington.

Laura E. Evans

Professor Evans's research explores local politics and intergovernmental relations in the United States. She examines the forces shaping regional policy coordination, with particular attention to the effects of racial and economic divisions on interaction between governments.

Her current project examines Native American tribal governments' efforts to build political capacity and to manage relations with other governments--the Feds, states, and localities. She finds that some tribes have developed effective strategies for building capacities and winning successes in regional politics, although racial context strongly conditions results. Ultimately, this study addresses how information and organizational learning matter in politics, and how politically marginalized groups can challenge the obstacles facing them.

María Elena García

Maria Elena Garcia (B.A. with Honors in Anthropology, College of William and Mary 1993, M.A. 1996 and Ph.D. 2001 in Anthropology, Brown University) is an associate professor in the Comparative History of Ideas Program. Her work on indigeneity, multicultural politics, and development in the Andes has appeared in multiple edited volumes and journals such as Latin American Perspectives, Anthropological Quarterly, and The International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Her book, Making Indigenous Citizens: Identities, Development, and Multicultural Activism in Peru, was published by Stanford University Press in 2005. Her most recent work focuses on indigenous intellectual production and on human-animal articulations.

Michelle Habell-Pallan

Michelle Habell-Pallan received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is author of Loca Motion: The Travels of Chicana and Latina Popular Culture (NYU Press, 2005) and co-editor of Latina/o Popular Culture (NYU Press, 2002). In support of her innovative research and writing on the politics of representation and cultural politics of "independent" popular culture, performance art, spoken word, and music, she received a Rockefeller Foundation Humanities Research Award, as well as a Woodrow Wilson Foundation Research Award. Her in-progress manuscript, Beat Migration: Chicano/a Roots/Routes of American Pop Music was recently granted an Associate Professor Research Institute Award by the UW Simpson Center for the Humanities. In addition, she serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Latina Studies.

Habell-Pallan's large scale public humanities projects include American Sabor: U.S. Latinos Shaping Popular Music, a collaboration of the UW School of Music, UW Department of Women Studies, UW Simpson Center for the Humanities, and the Experience Music Project. She serves as Guest Co-Curator of the exhibit, which opens in Fall 2007 at the Experience Music Project in Seattle.

Habell-Pallan teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in women of color feminist theory and methodology, cultural studies and feminism in the Americas, "racialization, gender, and sexuality" in rock criticism, Chicano/a Theater, social movements and popular culture, the politics of pop music.

Habell-Pallan also works with "Why Punish the Children?" a newly formed collective seeking to spread awareness about the traumatic effects of current immigration policy on children of undocumented mothers who are detained or deported.

Alexes Harris

Alexes Harris is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology at the University of Washington. Her degrees in the field of Sociology are from the University of Washington (B.A., 1997) and the University of California, Los Angeles (M.A., 1999; Ph.D., 2002). Her research and teaching areas include the juvenile justice system, race and ethnic theory, qualitative research methods, and social stratification and inequality.

Dr. Harris' dissertation employed both qualitative and statistical methodologies to examine the juvenile court institution and the process of transferring minors to the adult criminal justice system in California. A current project she is working on extends findings from her dissertation to investigate the decision-making of probation officers involved with waiver-eligible cases in juvenile courts. She is particularly interested in exploring any similarities and differences in probation officers' characterization of youth from differing racial and ethnic backgrounds. Another project investigates the association of race/ethnicity, nativity, and gender with use of payday loans, and the impact of payday lending on economic inequality between the middle class, native-born white majority, and minorities and immigrants.

Ralina Joseph

Dr. Joseph completed an undergraduate degree at Brown University, majoring in American Civilization. She received an M.A. and Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, San Diego. Her dissertation, "New Millennium 'Mulattas': Post-Ethnicity, Post-Feminism, and the Mixed-Race Excuse," investigates how contemporary representations of multiracial African American women are used for neo-conservative political agendas.

She is broadly interested in contemporary representation of race, gender, and sexuality in the United States. Her current research includes an analysis of California's failed "Racial Privacy Initiative" (Proposition 54) alongside "post-identity" performances in Tyra Banks's popular reality show, America's Next Top Model.

Moon-Ho Jung

Tetsuden Kashima

Mark C. Long

Mark C. Long joined the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs in 2004. He holds a doctorate in economics from the University of Michigan (2002). His research focuses on the effects of affirmative action (and alternative) college admissions policies on college entry; the effects of college financial aid on household savings; and his recent work examines the effect of school and college quality on test scores, educational attainment, labor market outcomes, family formation, and other behaviors. He is the winner of The Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management's 2002 Ph.D. Dissertation Award for the Best Ph.D. Dissertation in Public Policy and Management. He has publications in The Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Public Economics, the Journal of Econometrics, and Public Administration Review.

Tony Lucero

José Antonio Lucero (B.A. with Honors in Political Science 1994, Stanford University, M.A. 1997 and Ph.D. 2002 in Politics, Princeton University) is an associate professor in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. His research on indigenous politics, social movements, and representation in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Institute of International Education, the MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. His work on social movement theory and indigenous politics has been published in the Journal of Democracy, Comparative Politics, Latin American Perspectives, Latin American Research Review, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies and several edited volumes. Professor Lucero's book on indigenous movements, Struggles of Voice: The Politics of Indigenous Representation in the Andes is forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Christopher Parker

Professor Parker's recent research centers upon the myriad ways in which war and military service affect race relations. Specifically, he examines whether or not veterans and non-veterans differ systematically in their socio-political attitudes and behavior. More broadly, however, Professor Parker's research agenda focuses on the intersection between race and national identity, and how this combination affects political attitudes and behavior.

Before joining the faculty at the University of Washington, Professor Parker was a member of the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Parker also spent a year at Grinnell College where he was a CSMP Fellow. He has published in International Security, and is currently working on a book manuscript entitled, "Fighting for Democracy: Race, Military Service, and Insurgency during Jim Crow." He also is the principal investigator for the California Patriotism Pilot Study (CPPS, 2002), a survey that investigates the multi-dimensionality of patriotism. Professor Parker was a recipient of a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellowship, in residence at the University of California, Berkely/San Francisco in fall 2007. Currently, Professor Parker teaches a graduate level seminar in Public Opinion at the University of Washington.

Professor Parker spent a total of ten years in the United States Navy, after which he attended the University of California, Los Angeles. Parker received his doctorate at the University of Chicago.

Jack Turner

Jack Turner is assistant professor of political science at the University of Washington and a member of the Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race, and Sexuality (WISER). A 1998 graduate of Amherst College, he received an M.Phil. in political thought and intellectual history from University of Cambridge in 2001 and a Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University in 2006. Turner's research interests include African American political thought, race in American politics, and critical race theory. His work has appeared or will soon appear in Political Theory, Raritan, and Polity. He is working on a book entitled Awakening to Race: American Individualism and Responsible Citizenship.

Adam Warren

Assistant Professor of History
Latin American History
Office Location:
Office Hours:
eMail: awarren2@u.washington.edu