People

Program Administration

Erika Robb Larkins
Director
Office: AL-626
Phone: (619) 594-5028
Email: [email protected]

Dr. Erika Robb Larkins is the director of the Center for Brazilian Studies and associate professor of Anthropology and Sociology at SDSU. She received her doctorate in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and also holds a M.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of Chicago. Her research and teaching focus on violence and inequality in urban settings. Her first book, The Spectacular Favela: Violence in Modern Brazil (U California Press 2015), explores the political economy of spectacular violence in one of Rio’s most famous favelas. Dr. Larkins is presently working on a second book examining the private security industry in Brazil.

Kristal Bivona
Assistant Director
Office: AL-626
Phone: (619) 594-4771
Email: [email protected]

Dr. Kristal Bivona is the Assistant Director of the Center for Brazilian Studies and teaches courses on Brazilian Cultural Studies for the College of Arts and Letters. She holds a Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from the University of California, Los Angeles, an M.A. in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth College, and received a B.A. in English with a Spanish minor from SDSU as a community college transfer student. Her current book project investigates how filmmakers from Brazil and the Southern Cone grapple with transitional justice, victimhood, and memory of the most recent military dictatorships. Her work broadly looks at how cultural production, including street art, installations, and film, engages with pressing contemporary issues, such as state violence, transitional politics, and human rights.

Flavia Soares

Center Coordinator

Office: AL-626

Phone: (619) 594-4771

Email: [email protected]

Flavia Soares is the Center Coordinator. She graduated with an MBA degree in Business & Management Systems from Candido Mendes University, Rio de Janeiro/Brazil, and also has a BS in Business Administration. With over 10 years of management consulting experience, most of them leading management improvement projects at Petrobras S/A, she seeks to use her background as well as her cultural and language skills to promote collaboration and support the Center for Brazilian Studies in all its areas of expertise.

Brooke Dolabella

Assistant/Student

Office: AL-626
Email: [email protected]

Brooke is currently working towards her Master’s in Public Health (MPH) and MA in Latin American Studies. She got her start in the field of public health while volunteering for an NGO in Brazil and previously received a BA in Anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is most interested in maternal health, environmental justice, and refugee/im(migrant) health.

Amethyst Sanchez

Assistant/Student

Office: AL-626

As a graduate student in the Anthropology Department, Amethyst’s research interests coincide with her degrees in both Anthropology and Sociology, with particular emphasis on activism, feminism, structural inequality, and historical archaeology. Though she is Argentine and not Brazilian, Amethyst is happy to be engaging with her Latin American heritage through working as a research assistant and staff member at the Center.

Associated Faculty & Staff

Ryan Abman
Assistant Professor, Economics
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Stuart Aitken
Professor, Geography
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Cristina Alfaro
Professor, Dual Language and English Learner Education
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Adisa Alkebulan
Chair, Africana Studies
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Thaís da C. L. Alves
Chair, Construction Engineering and Management
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Cristian Aquino-Sterling
Associate Professor, School of Teacher Education (STE) and Associate Dean for Diversity and International Affairs, College of Education
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Jessica Baham
International Programs Coordinator, College of Arts and Letters
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Mark Ballam
Managing Director, CIBER, College of Business
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Rebecca Bartel
Assistant Director, Center for Latin American Studies
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Pablo Ben
Associate Professor, History
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Trent Biggs
Professor, Geography
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Fernando J. Bosco
Professor, Geography
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Stephanie Brodine, M.D., Georgetown University
Professor, Public Health
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Amanda Bryant
Assistant Director, CIBER
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Grace Cheng
Director, Interdisciplinary Human Rights Initiative
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Cássia De Abreu
Lecturer, Portuguese
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Kevin Delgado
Associate Professor, Music
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Fernando De Sales
Assistant Professor, Geography
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Robert Edwards
Professor, Biology & Computer Science
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Salvador Espinosa
Associate Professor, Public Administration
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Gabriel Gonzalez
Assistant Professor, Marketing
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Allen Gontz
Professor and Chair, Geology
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Lawrence Herzog
Professor, City Planning
Email: [email protected]
Biography

José Carmelo Interlando
Professor, Mathematics
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Zoe Jarocki
Undergraduate Instruction Librarian, Library & Information Access
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Susan Kiene
Professor, School of Public Health
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Matthew Lauer
Director, Sustainability Program
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Enrico Marcelli
Associate Professor, Sociology
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Madhavi McCall
Associate Dean, College of Arts and Letters
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Anta Merritt
Lecturer, Africana Studies
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Nadezda Novakovic
Program Specialist, LARC
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Thomas Novotny
Professor, School of Public Health
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Ramona Pérez
Director, Center for Latin American Studies
Email: [email protected]
Biography

John Putnam
Director, International Business Program
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Amy Schmitz Weiss
Professor, School of Journalism and Media Studies
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Kate Swanson
Associate Professor, Geography
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Charles Toombs
Professor, Africana Studies
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Milton Torikachvili
Professor, Physics
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Patricia van Damme
Advisor, College of Business
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Ricardo Vasconcelos
Professor, Portuguese
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Matthew Verbyla
Assistant Professor, Environmental Engineering
[email protected]
Biography

María Luisa Zúñiga
Associate Professor, School of Social Work
Email: [email protected]
Biography

Intercollegiate Advisory Board Members

Ryan Abman
Stuart Aitken
Thaís da C. L. Alves

Cristian Aquino-Sterling
Mark Ballam
Fernando De Sales

Gabriel Gonzalez
Zoe Jarocki
Madhavi McCall

Milton Torikachvili
Ricardo Vasconcelos
María Luisa Zúñiga

Visiting Scholars

Denise De Alcântara
Visiting Scholar
Email: [email protected]

Salvador Gullo Neto
Visiting Scholar
Email: [email protected]

Keila Pinezi
Visiting Scholar
Email: [email protected]

Lidiane Toledo
Visiting Scholar
Email: [email protected]