Cecilia M. Rivas is Associate Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her areas of research and expertise include migration, modernity, media, and Central American Studies. She is the author of Salvadoran Imaginaries: Mediated Identities and Cultures of Consumption (Rutgers UP, 2014).

As part of the Global Latinidades Consortium, Rivas will facilitate multidisciplinary research on Central Americans along with several themes that include transnational imaginaries and the emergence of Central American-American identities, analysis of media portrayals of the isthmus, migrants and global health, and representations of time and space. She is planning to develop new graduate and undergraduate courses that address the (re)formation and (re)imagination of Central American ontologies and epistemologies using an array of interdisciplinary methodological approaches, including but not limited to fieldwork ethnography, media research, and cultural studies. The MRPI team at UCSC will use this initiative to render visible the significant research expertise that UC campuses have on Central American studies, and serve as the springboard to substantial future research collaborations and funding streams, new course development, and especially the creation of a UC System research center for the study of Central America in global contexts.