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Faculty Research

These are the department's four overlapping themes:

Environments and Resilience

We study the challenges of local and global environmental change for communities and societies, as well as patterns and strategies of resilience in confronting those challenges.  

Health and Society

We use the tools of interdisciplinary social science to study the social and environmental factors affecting the health of individuals, groups, and communities, with a critical focus on disparities and injustices in health outcomes.  

Migration and Diasporas

Recognizing the increasing scale and significance of migration and refugee movements worldwide, we investigate the conditions and issues facing migratory, refugee, and diasporic populations at the local, societal and global levels.  

Community and Social Change

From rural villages and rapidly expanding cities across the world, to the diverse urban and suburban landscapes of South Florida, we investigate a wide range of topics at the intersection of community and social change. with an eye towards how groups of people are working to make a fairer, better world.  

Faculty Highlights:

Zachary Levenson 

Tuesday April 1, 2025

GSS Professor Zachary Levenson has published a new article titled "South Africa’s Radicals: The Anti-Apartheid Movement’s Forgotten Wing" in the Souls journal. View the article in this link.

Jean Rahier and Andrea Queeley 

Monday March 31, 2025

Dr. Rahier and Dr. Queeley will be feautured in a LACC presentation titled "Ethnoracial Law for Afrodesdendants in Contemporary Multiculturalist Ecuador".

Lisa Mueller 

Wednesday March 12, 2025

GSS Adjunct Professor Dr. Lisa Mueller published an article in Social Science Japan titled, "Toward an intersectional Burakuness: regional discontinuities in Japan's Buraku-focused museums." View her article by clicking this link.

Nelson Varas-Díaz, Sheilla Rodríguez-Madera, Mark Padilla, Genevieve Reid, and Kevin Grove

Monday February 24, 2025

A recent paper on physician migration and spatial stigma was published in Global Public Health. This work includes contributions from five GSS faculty members. View the article here: https://doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2025.2467767 

Matthew Marr

Friday February 21, 2025

A report from research by GSS professor Matthew Marr and Ph.D. student Melissa Hurtado (Rice University) has been released based on unsheltered homelessness and street outreach in Miami-Dade County. The study has been funded by the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) and conducted in consultation with the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust and the Miami Coalition to Advance Racial Equity (MCARE). The policy report is part of a series from FIU’s Green School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). It presents preliminary findings from one component of a multi-method study that uses interviews, observation, analysis of administrative data, and community photography. 

View the policy report in this link

Kevin Grove   

Monday February 17, 2025

Professor Kevin Grove will deliver the plenary lecture in Political Geography on "Political Geographies of, and in, an Informational Political Economy" at the 2025 annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers.

Juliet Erazo  

Monday February 17, 2025

Associate Professor Juliet Erazo recently completed a 3-year grant, funded by the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, for ethnographic research in the Ecuadorian Amazon. She is currently working on a book and two journal articles which analyze the results of this research.

Chris Girard 

Monday February 17, 2025

Springer Nature author services has promoted GSS Professor Emeritus Chris Girard's recent publication in their 90-second video clip: https://vimeo.com/1049762708?share=copy

Girard, Chris (2025) Cultural information dynamics and the rise of women in Norway’s state and military. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 12: 29.

To view the full article: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-04247-z

Andrea Queeley

Friday February 14, 2025

GSS and African and African Diaspora Studies professor Andrea Queeley's recent projects include:

“The Black Mothers Care Plan: Reducing Racial Bias and Supporting Maternal and Infant Health”, Co-PI October 2021-2024, supported by a $1.2M grant from The Children’s Trust Early Childhood Demonstration Projects. For more information see https://cwgs.fiu.edu/projects/black-mothers-care-plan/

“New Orleans Lower Ninth Ward Wetlands: A Cultural History” preliminary research for the Cultural Heritage STEM Learning Trail at the Sankofa Wetland Park, in partnership with the National Parks Service and supported by a grant from the New Orleans Recreation and Culture Fund. https://sankofanola.org/wetland-park-and-nature-trail/

“Disrupting Anti-Blackness: Artists Voicing Truths”, Exhibit Co-Curator with Dr. Valerie Patterson, Frost Museum, January-June 2022. For more information see: https://frost.fiu.edu/exhibitions-events/events/2022/01/disrupting-anti-blackness.html

Jean Muteba Rahier

Friday February 14, 2025

Major grants

PI of the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded research project ($379,500) conducted from August 2021 to December 2024: “A Multifaceted Examination of the Application of Ethnoracial Law for Afrodescendants in Contemporary Multiculturalist Ecuador”

NSF Award ID 2124564

Key research focus areas

Founding Director of the Observatory of Justice for Afrodescendants in Latin America (OJALA) since 2018, see https://ojala.fiu.edu.  OJALA involves a group of international researchers based in Latin America, North America, and Europe. OJALA is housed in the Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center (KG-LACC).  OJALA has the objective to produce comparative knowledge about Afrodescendants’ human rights in the practice of Latin America’s judicial systems.  OJALA has been supported by the Ford Foundation-LASA Small Grants program; the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research; the National Science Foundation (NSF); and Florida International University.  See: https://www.scientia.global/dr-jean-muteba-rahier-championing-human-rights-for-afrodescendants-in-latin-america/

Since August 2021, Editor-in-Chief of the multi-disciplinary scholarly journal Latin American & Caribbean Ethnic Studies (LACES); see https://lacc.fiu.edu/laces/.

Major publications

Producer of the video: “Do Afro-Ecuadorian Lives Matter? Chronology of a Litigation”. 2025.

See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7vF660K9JM

Guillermo Grenier

Thursday February 13, 2025

GSS professor Guillermo Grenier served as one of the Principal Investigators on the $4.5 million Mellon grant “Commons for Justice” project in Fall 2024. Dr. Grenier also conducted the 2024 FIU Cuba Poll which generated $4,838,730 in publicity for FIU and reached an audience of 498,236,505 million people.

Ashley Hahn A 

Tuesday February 11, 2025

Congratulations to GSS professor Ashley Hahn A  on her workshop article "Liars are More Influential: Effect of Deception in Influence Maximization on Social Networks":

Mehmet Aktas, Esra Akbas, and Ashley Hahn (2024) Liars are More Influential: Effect of Deception in Influence Maximization on Social Networks, the 2024 IEEE International Conference on Big Data Workshop Next-Gen-BiGLA 2024.

Ashley Hahn A 

Tuesday February 11, 2025

Congratulations to GSS professor Ashley Hahn A  on her new publication "Being and becoming through Facebook: morality, sociality, and reflection among young Turkish-American Muslim women" in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute:

Ashley Hahn (2025) Being and Becoming Through Facebook: Morality, sociality, and piety among young Turkish-American Muslim women, Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute, 31 (2): 1-18.

https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.14230 

Monday February 10, 2025

Since 2022, the NSF-funded Puerto Rico PhotoVoice Project has united researchers from FIU, the University of Utah, UPR, and communities in Puerto Rico targeted for relocation to explore disaster recovery challenges through photography and critical reflection.

The project began with 13 participants from Comerío, recruited via community-based organization Casa Juana Colón. In workshops co-led by FIU, UPR, and community members, participants used the PhotoVoice methodology to create a photo exhibit titled “Realities and Dreams in Comerío: A Just Recovery,” which proposed alternatives for disaster recovery and health promotion. The exhibit’s success, attended by local stakeholders, led to additional cycles in Comerío (“Project Resurgence: Cohesion with Security”) and Loíza (“Relocating Lives”), addressing disaster response, recovery, and community health challenges.

Findings (presented in this article) emphasize the leadership of women in disaster recovery and holistic health promotion. The project’s expansion to other communities and the participants’ recent exhibit at the Green School demonstrate its impact on fostering participatory leadership in Comerío and Loíza. Visit the full virtual gallery exhibits here. A video summary of a recent visit to FIU by the Puerto Rican community collaborators for both communities is also available here.  

Richard Tardanico

Monday February 10, 2025

GSS professor Rick Tardanico recently published two articles based on his long-term participatory research on dispossession and speculative mega-development in Miami’s Little Haiti community:

Tardanico, R. 2024. ‘Fractured Mobilization: Miami’s Little Haiti confronts mega-real estate speculation.’ Critical Housing Analysis 11 (1): 127-136.

Tardanico, R. 2025. 'Mega-real estate speculation and racialized dispossession: Miami's Little Haiti.'  International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 49 (1): 21-38. 

Kevin Grove

Monday February 10, 2025

GSS professor Kevin Grove has published a co-edited book, Political Geography in Practice (Filippo Menga, Caroline Nagel, Kevin Grove, and Kimberley Peters, eds.). Organized by editors of Political Geography, the discipline’s flagship journal, and featuring contributions from leading scholars in the field, the book focuses on the theories, approaches, and methodologies that inform political geography, and equips readers with state-of-the art understanding of how political geographers practice their craft. 

Sheilla Rodríguez-Madera and Nelson Varas-Díaz

Monday January 27, 2025

Dr. Sheilla Rodriguez-Madera and Dr. Nelson Varas-Diaz's book "The Bad Bunny Enigma: Culture, Resistance, and Uncertainty" has been cited in Brazil. The newspaper O Globo has highlighted how Bad Bunny’s new album, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, serves as a powerful political statement about Puerto Rico. Dr. Sheilla R. Madera, co-editor of the collection and professor at FIU was interviewed about the artist’s impact on key issues such as gentrification, cultural resistance, and Boricua identity. Bad Bunny not only dominates global music charts but has also turned his art into a tool of artivism, amplifying messages of resistance and social awareness worldwide.

Nelson Varas-Díaz, Sheilla Rodríguez-Madera, Mark Padilla, Genevieve Reid, and Kevin Grove

Thursday January 23, 2025

The latest publication in the journal Health & Place includes five GSS faculty members. Nelson Varas-Díaz, Sheilla Rodríguez-Madera, Mark Padilla, Genevieve Reid, and Kevin Grove explore the critical issue of energy insecurity in Puerto Rico and its profound impact on mental health. This study, conducted in Adjuntas in collaboration with Casa Pueblo, highlights how unreliable energy access disrupts daily life, contributes to stress and anxiety, and affects the emotional well-being of affected communities.

Sheilla Rodríguez-Madera and Nelson Varas-Díaz

Monday January 13, 2025

Dr. Sheilla Rodríguez-Madera and Dr. Nelson Varas-Díaz's new book, The Bad Bunny Enigma: Culture, Resistance, and Uncertainty, has been published by Lexington Books. This volume, co-edited by Dr. Rodríguez-Madera and Dr. Varas-Díaz, brings together scholars from various disciplines to explore the cultural, political, and artistic dimensions of Bad Bunny’s work and its broader sociocultural impact. 

The book critically examines:

  • Nostalgia and collective memory in Bad Bunny’s music.
  • His role in political movements, including the “Verano del 19” protests in Puerto Rico.
  • Representations of gender and queerness in reggaeton.
  • The tension between global commercialization and local authenticity in his art.

The introduction, co-authored by Nelson, Daniel Nevárez Araújo, and Sheilla, frames Bad Bunny as a cultural enigma—a figure who navigates identity, resistance, and innovation while grappling with the sociopolitical realities of Puerto Rico and its colonial legacy.

Here is the link to the book on Amazon, where you can find the cover and additional details: https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Bunny-Enigma-Socio-Cultural-Explorations/dp/1666935964