IV FORUM
ON
U.S.-MEXICO TRANSNATIONALISM & TRANSNATIONAL COMMUNITIES

Wednesday, 27 Session

Biographical Summaries

Joan Biever is the Director of the Kliesen International Center and Professor of Psychology at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas. She received her master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Notre Dame in Counseling Psychology in 1981, her M.A. in Counseling Psychology from UND in 1979, and her B.S. (summa cum laude) in Psychology from Ball State University in 1976. She is a licensed psychologist who worked as a psychologist, supervisor, and administrator in rural community mental health centers in Indiana and Hawaii before joining the OLLU faculty in 1990. Dr. Biever has presented and published on the topics of multiculturalism, providing psychological services to Spanish speaking populations, and training issues. She directs two federally funded projects focused on developing professional language proficiency.

Gustavo Cano holds a Masters Degree in Public Policy and Administration from Columbia University, where he currently is completing a Ph.D. in Political Science. He also is a Guest Scholar at the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego. His research interests include transnationalism, Latino and urban politics, and political mobilization and psychology. He has conducted research and served as an adjunct professor at various universities and research centers in the United States and Mexico, as well as the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Mexico City. He was the recipient of the 2004 APSA Award for Latino Scholarship, for his work on transnationalism and migration.

Agustín Escobar Latapí is a research professor at the western Mexico branch of the Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology, located in Guadalajara, where he directs the Migration Studies Program. His principal research interests and recent work focus on international migration and social policy. He is a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences and serves as an academic advisor to the International Organization for Migration, as well as a member of the international or academic advisory boards of various research centers and journal that specialize in migration and social policy.

Raquel R. Marquez is an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio where she teaches in the Department of Sociology. Her teaching expertise centers on issues of Race Relations, Latino Studies and Border Studies. Her research has addressed issues related to Latina women and labor, Latina women and immigration and community change in San Antonio, Texas. She has published extensively in each of these areas. Dr. Marquez is co-editor of two forthcoming books: Transformations of La Familia on the U.S.-Mexico Border. Under Review, University of Notre Dame Press, and The Politics and Economics of San Antonio.

Nina Patrizio-Quiñones is the Curriculum Coordinator of the Biliterate Programs and Assistant Professor of Spanish Language and Literature at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas. She received her master's degree in Spanish American Literature (summa cum laude) from the University of Maryland in 1978. Prior to joining the faculty at OLLU, Ms. Patrizio-Quiñones held several senior level positions in the US federal government, spending the major part of her career in the Language Training School of the Central Intelligence Agency.

David Stea is Professor of Geography and Director of the Center for Texas-Mexico Applied Research at Texas State University – San Marcos. He holds a B.S. (Hons) from Carnegie-Mellon University in Mechanical/Aeronautical Engineering and a Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford University. An author of some 120 articles and books and a resident of Mexico for ten years, he has also been Enrique O. Aragon Distinguished Professor at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, and Visiting Professor at Universidad Autonoma de Baja California and Universidad de Guanajuato. Dr. Stea was nominated for the Right Livelihood Prize (the “alternative Nobel”) in 1987 and for a doctorate honoris causa by Universidade de A Corunna in Galicia, .Spain, in 2003.

Peter M. Ward is Director of the Mexican Center at The University of Texas at Austin, where he holds the C.B. Smith Sr. Centennial Chair in US-Mexico Relations and is professor in the Department of Sociology and in the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. He received his Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Liverpool and has devoted almost thirty years to professional activities in Latin America, especially Mexico. These activities have focused on low-income housing and irregular settlement, community development programs, urbanization and planning, Mexican politics and democratic change, local governance, and border affairs. He has published extensively in each of these areas and has served as an advisor to the World Health Organization, the United Nations, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Organization for Economic Development, USAID, and the Mexican government, which in 2000 honored Dr. Ward and his wife Dr. Victoria Rodríguez with the Ohtli Medal for their services to the advancement of understanding of Mexican culture and society. He also has held senior professorial positions at University College London and the University of Cambridge, and been a member of the editorial advisory panels of a number of professional journals, as well as serving since 2001 as the Editor-in-Chief of the Latin American Research Review.