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Submit a Lightning Talk

Do you have experience using or creating area studies collections?  Or have new ideas about library collections that support area studies?  Consider presenting at the symposium.  Lightning talks will span about 8 minutes.

SUBMIT A PROPOSAL

The deadline to apply is February 28, 2025.

Agenda coming soon!

Mara Thacker

University of Illinois Urbana Champaign

Associate Professor, South Asian Studies & Global Popular Culture Librarian

Mara Thacker is the South Asian Studies & Global Popular Culture Librarian at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. As an Associate Professor, she has cultivated a research agenda on trends in area studies librarianship, focusing on distinctive collections, especially international comics, and public engagement. Mara’s work to build and market one of the largest collections of South Asian comics in a North American research library contributed to her receiving the Library Journal’s Movers & Shakers award in 2017. Mara is also one of the founders and editors-in-chief of the Journal of Library Outreach and Engagement. Mara serves as President of the Comics Studies Society’s Research Librarian Cohort.

Leila Gómez

University of Colorado Boulder

Professor, Project Director of the Quechua Program at LALSC, Women and Gender Studies

Dr. Leila Gómez is a Professor in the Department of Women and Gender Studies at CU Boulder. Her research interests include Latin American and Indigenous literature, film and culture in the 19th and 20th centuries, with an emphasis in the Andes, Mexico, Paraguay, and Argentina. She was the Director of the Latin American Studies Center from 2017 to 2023 at CU Boulder. Dr. Gómez’s most recent book is Indigenous Materials in Libraries and the Curriculum Latin American and Latinx Sources (co-author Javier Muñoz and Kathia Ibacache) Routledge 2024.

Kathia Ibacache

University of Colorado Boulder

Associate Professor, Romance Languages Librarian

Kathia Ibacache is the Romance Languages Librarian at the University of Colorado, Boulder. After working for six years in public libraries, building youth collections, and creating programs in Spanish and music, Kathia understands the importance of advocacy, collaboration, and outreach. As a subject specialist, she is interested in advancing collection development with a user-centered approach and focusing on inclusion and diversity. Her research interest encompasses digital accessibility within teaching and learning technologies, collection development, and representing Latin American indigenous language materials in university libraries. Kathia won an IMPART Award in 2019 and is currently an Associate Professor. Kathia holds an MLIS degree from San Jose State University and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Southern California.

Javier Muñoz-Diaz, PhD

Farmingdale State College, State University of New York

Assistant Professor of Modern Languages

Javier Muñoz-Díaz (he/him) is Assistant Professor at SUNY-Farmingdale. His research focuses on Latin American Studies, Indigenous Studies (Quechua/Kichwa), Queer Studies, and Environmental Humanities. He has published research in academic journals such as English Languages ​​Notes, Anthropologica, Letras (Lima), and Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana. His first book, co-written with Kathia Ibacache and Leila Gómez, is titled Indigenous Materials in Libraries and the Curriculum: Latin American and Latinx Sources (Routledge, 2024).

JEFF PETERSON

Brigham Young University

Assistant Professor of Japanese

Jeff Peterson is an Assistant Professor of Japanese in BYU’s Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages. He has taught Japanese courses across the entire spectrum from beginning to advanced levels. He earned his PhD at Purdue University in Applied Linguistics & Foreign Language Acquisition. His research specializes in Japanese language pedagogy and linguistics and he is especially interested in the role of extensive reading as a tool for increasing foreign language proficiency. Dr. Peterson  is the recipient of the 2022 “Hamako Ito Chaplin Memorial Award for Excellence in Japanese Language Teaching” presented by the American Association of Teachers of Japanese and the 2024 recipient of the Utah Foreign Language Association’s “Teacher of the Year Award.

JEFFEREY NOKES

Brigham Young Unversity

Associate Dean, College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences

Dr. Jeff Nokes is an associate professor in the History Department at Brigham Young University and Associate Dean in the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences. A former middle school and high school teacher, his research focuses on history teaching and learning. He is the author of Building Students’ Historical Literacies: Learning to Read and Reason with Historical Texts and Evidence and has published several journal articles and book chapters on the topics of historical literacy, literacy instruction, and teacher preparation. He currently teaches a “methods of teaching history and social studies” course, an “explorations of teaching” course, and a course on historical literacy. Dr. Nokes is the 2019 recipient of BYU’s Karl G. Maeser Excellence in Teaching Award, which recognizes faculty members who have demonstrated sustained and clear superiority in teaching.

M. CHRISTOPHER LOW

University of Utah

Director, Middle East Center and Assistant Professor, History

Michael Christopher Low is Assistant Professor of History, Environmental Humanities Research Professor, and Director of the Middle East Center at the University of Utah. Low received his PhD from Columbia University in 2015 and previously taught at Iowa State University. He is the author of Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj(Columbia University Press, 2020). In 2021, Imperial Mecca received the Middle East Studies Association’s Albert Hourani Book Award and was shortlisted for the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize. Imperial Mecca has since been translated into Arabic and Turkish. Low is also co-editor of The Subjects of Ottoman International Law (Indiana University Press, 2020). In 2020-2021, he was a Senior Humanities Fellow for the Study of the Arab World at NYU Abu Dhabi. Low is currently working on a new book, Saltwater Kingdoms: Fossil-Fueled Water and Climate Change in Arabia, under contract with University of California Press. He also serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Global History and the Middle East Environmental Histories book series from Leiden University Press.

ADRIAN BELL

University of Utah

Associate Professor of Anthropology 

Adrian Viliami Bell (PhD Human Ecology 2011, UC Davis; BS Zoology, MS Integrative Biology, BYU) is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Utah. As an evolutionary anthropologist he studies the effect of migration on cultural evolution. He uses game-theoretic and demographic mathematical models alongside active ethnographic fieldwork in the Kingdom of Tonga and the U.S. to address fundamental questions about the human condition.