Research grants

The Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas will award research grants, up to $1,000 each, for UCSC graduate students conducting research in the areas of interest to the Huerta Center including Chicanx, Latinx, and Latin American, migration, cross-border/hemispheric, and human rights studies.

Award details: Funds are available for domestic and international travel for the purpose of archival research and data collection, and for research supplies and services. Huerta Center awards for graduate students follow these budget guidelines:

• Allowable expenses include miscellaneous research services (e.g., manuscript preparation, translation, videographer, website designer); software licenses, books, and other research supplies; and travel for research and to present work at professional meetings (economy-class airfare only, following strict UC travel guidelines).
• Non-allowable expenses include general overhead and computer hardware.

Recipients are expected to acknowledge the Huerta Center’s support in any publications related to the sponsored research and to share their findings in a public forum convened by the Huerta Center. They must also submit a report by June 15 to conclude the fiscal year.

Eligibility: Students in good academic standing are eligible to apply for our research grants and awards. If a graduate student is proposing to do research that involves human subjects, the expectation is that IRB approval has been secured OR is near final stage of approval (by the following January)

How to apply: Interested individuals should submit the form below, which includes:

1. Research proposal, including a discussion of the project’s theoretical significance and methodology (not to exceed three double-spaced pages).
2. An itemized budget not to exceed $1000, with a rationale explaining all items. See the website for information about allowable and non-allowable expenses (LINK).
3. Curriculum Vita, two pages max.
4. An email from a UCSC faculty sponsor (advisor) endorsing the research and confirming the graduate student is in good academic standing (up to 2 paragraphs will suffice). The faculty sponsor must send the endorsement email to huerta@ucsc.edu by the application deadline with your name in the subject (GRAD STUDENT NAME – Huerta Center Grad Grant). It is the applicant’s responsibility to ensure the faculty sponsor submits their email endorsement, indicating their support for the application.

We will also accept letters of recommendation instead of an email endorsement if that is the faculty member’s preference. That letter should be sent as a PDF and emailed to huerta@ucsc.edu.

Applications closed. Next cycle begins October 2024.

Previous awardees

2023-2024

• Amando Argueto-Vogel, Latin American and Latino Studies, “Migration Justice: Borders, Enforcement, and Central American Mobility”
• Karen Crespo Triveño, Environmental Studies & Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, “Restoring La Agricultura Familiar Campesina? Re-peasantization in Bolivia’s Andean Highlands and Amazonian Lowlands”
• Marina Dadico Amâncio de Souza, Latin American and Latino Studies, “Between Black Roots and Asphalt: Quilombola Political Struggles in Porto Alegre and West Pará”
• Ana Flecha, Latin American and Latino Studies, “Da Floresta até o Mar: Mythic-historical spaces of Brazilian popular imagination in performances of the Santo Daime bailado”
• Mario Gómez Zamora, Latin American and Latino Studies, “Queerness and Gender Performance in Indigenous P’urhépecha Communities in Michoacán and the United States”
• Kaio Lacet, Latin American and Latino Studies, “Political Generations and Racializing Affects: Whiteness in a Decade of Political Upheaval in Brazil (2013–23)”
• Jamilli Pacheco-Urquiza, Film and Digital Media, “En Puerto Escondido”
• Tiago Tasca, Politics, “Subnational politics of vaccine hesitancy in Brazil’

2022-2023

• Bhavyaa Sharma, Economics, “How much is a formal job worth? Evidence from Mexico”
• Meru Sharma, Film and Digital Media, “Unrooted”
• Alejandra Watanabe Farro, Latin American and Latino Studies, “Strategies of extraction for a Green Transition: the emergent politics of environmental conflicts in Chile and Peru”
• Pablo Escudero, History of Consciousness, “Between the western model of law, and the commons: Caso Pueblos Tangaeri y Taromenane vs. Ecuador”
• Livia Perez de Paula, Digital Arts and New Media, “Finding Norma”
• Mario Gomez-Zamora, Latin American and Latino Studies, “Redefining Indigeneity, Colonial Violence, and Strategies of Resistance among Queer P’urhépecha People in Michoacán and the United States”
• Nathan Edenhofer, Politics, “Effects of Popular and Elite Strategies in Mining Contention”
• Mitra Ghaffari, Film and Digital Media, “Island Cycles / Ciclos de la isla”
• Lucia Vitale, Politics, “The Borderlands of Global Health Citizenship: Inclusion & Exclusion along the Dominican-Haitian Border”
• Amando Argueta-Vogel, Latin American and Latino Studies, “Migrations Otherwise and Studies of Central American Mobility”
• Daniel Rodriguez Ramirez, Social Psychology, “Enacting Change: Learning from Activists’ Transformative Change Processes and Actions”

Lionel Cantú Memorial Award

The Huerta Center is proud to collaborate with the Departments of Sociology and Latin American and Latino Studies in supporting graduate students working in Latino sociology, immigration studies, transnational/cross-border studies, and gender and sexuality studies, particularly with a focus on gay men and masculinity, via the Lionel Cantú Memorial Award. All UCSC graduate students in good academic standing in the Social Sciences, Humanities, or Arts are eligible for this award.

The Lionel Cantú Memorial Award celebrates the life and work of Lionel Cantú (1965-2002), former Assistant Professor of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz. Professor Cantú’s scholarship bridged and advanced Latino sociology, immigration studies, transnational/cross-border studies, gender and sexuality studies, and the study of gay men and masculinity.

Award details: UC Santa Cruz graduate students working in any of these areas are eligible to apply, with preference for applicants working in and linking more than one area. Recipients may use the award to pay for travel for research or to present work at a professional meeting; books, software packages, and supplies; and miscellaneous services, such as manuscript preparation, translation, transcription, and video documentation. Award amount ranges between $600 – $700.

Eligibility: Students in good academic standing are eligible to apply for our research grants and awards. If a graduate student is proposing to do research that involves human subjects, the expectation is that IRB approval has been secured OR is near final stage of approval.

How to apply: Applications typically include a 2-page CV and 500-700-word statement that describes how your scholarship builds upon, contributes to, and, ideally, links Latino sociology, immigration studies, transnational/cross-border studies, gender and sexuality studies, and/or the study of gay men and masculinity.

One letter of recommendation is required by a UC Santa Cruz faculty sponsor to be emailed to huerta@ucsc.edu. Please direct inquiries to huerta@ucsc.edu.

Deadline to apply: Monday, May 6, 2024 at 5:00 p.m. PST

Previous awardees

2022-2023

• Azad Azizyan, Social Documentation, “Against Forgetting”
• John Ortiz Vargas, Social Documentation, “Amanecer: The Indigenous Landback Movement in Costa Rica”

2021-2022

• Bree Booth, Latin American and Latino Studies, “Tracing Queerness through the Atlantic”
• Rafael Franco-Flores, Literature, “Monstrous Maps: Transgressing Heteronormative Borders in 19th-Century Monster Literature”
• Rosa Maria Navarro, Sociology, “Settler- Colonialism In Mexico: Mestizaje as a Project of Cultural Genocide”

Professional development award

While we encourage UC Santa Cruz graduate students to apply for our research grants in the fall and for the Lionel Cantú Memorial Award in the spring, we recognize that professional development opportunities (such as attending a conference or symposium) sometimes arise at other times of the year. The Huerta Center director maintains a modest fund that supports graduate students’ professional development. Recipients may use the award to present work or to interview for an academic job at a professional meeting.

How to apply: To apply, students must demonstrate that Chicano, Latino, Latin American, and/or migration studies is a primary field of their research and they must be in good academic standing. In addition to submitting a one-page application letter and itemized budget to the Huerta Center director, applicants must be recommended by a member of the UC Santa Cruz faculty.

A faculty recommendation may be in the form of a brief email (huerta@ucsc.edu) in which the faculty member confirms the graduate student is in good academic standing and that the proposed project aligns with the Huerta Center’s research areas of interest.

Awardees must submit a one-page report no more than 30 days after spending the funds and are expected to acknowledge the Huerta Center’s support in any publications related to the sponsored research. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis and pending funding.

Tip Sheet for Endorsement Letter Writers by Dr. Ben V. Olguín (Robert and Liisa Erickson Presidential Chair in English, University of California, Santa Barbara).