Two UC Irvine History faculty were awarded Research & Innovation: Latino Studies Project seed grants from Alianza MX, a University of California systemwide initiative, in January 2026.
Kevan Aguilar, Assistant Professor, and Maurice Rafael Magaña, UC Davis Associate Professor of Anthropology, received funding for “Sin Fronteras: Mapping Radical Histories in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands.” The project will document community organizing and political protest throughout the U.S.-Mexico border region, creating an archive and public history resource that will incorporate multimedia sources via interviews with artists and activists, as well as digital copies of cultural productions like zines and visual art.
Professor Alex Borucki, along with colleagues from UC Merced and UC Santa Barbara, received funding for “Trayectorias Afro: The Movement of Enslaved Africans and their Descendants Within New Spain.” The project examines the history of African-descended people in Mexico and the United States by expanding a new website on the movement of enslaved Africans and their descendants in colonial Mexico, developing educational lessons for the website, organizing workshops for K-12 teachers, and hosting public events in California and Mexico.