people

The Southwest Center

1052 North Highland Avenue
University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona 85721
Phone: 520/621-2484
Fax: 520/621-9922

Joseph Wilder is director of the Southwest Center, editor of Journal of the Southwest, and edits the Center's two book series at the University of New Mexico Press and the University of Arizona Press. His Ph.D., from Notre Dame, is in political theory.

Jeff Banister is assistant editor of Journal of the Southwest and coordinator for the Southwest Center’s Mexico programs. He has a master's degree in Latin American Studies and is working on a Ph.D. in geography at the University of Arizona.

Lupita Cruz is the Southwest Center’s senior business manager. Lupita was born and raised in Cananea, Sonora, Mexico, and has lived in the United States since she was fourteen. She is in charge of the center's business operations, including Journal of the Southwest.

Faculty

David Yetman has been a research social scientist at the Southwest Center since 1993. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Arizona in 1972. Yetman’s research interests focus on the Mexican state of Sonora and Sonora’s immediate neighbors, and he has written extensively on how indigenous people incorporate natural resources into their daily lives. In addition to his research activities, Yetman is host to the Public Broadcasting System program The Desert Speaks, which originates at KUAT television at the University of Arizona.

John Messina, AIA, is a research architect with the Southwest Center and the University of Arizona School of Architecture. His research activities are focused on the architecture and urbanism of Northwest Mexico and the Southwest United States. This research has led to the development of a new General Education elective, entitled "Sonora: A Description of Place in Arid America." He is working to develop a clearer understanding of settlement patterns, building typologies, and place determinants in order to provide a knowledge base of regional precedents. John received a MArch from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Thomas Sheridan, Ph.D., is research anthropologist and professor, with a joint position in the Southwest Center and the University of Arizona Department of Anthropology. Tom's research and publication focus on the ethnohistory of the greater Southwest, with a particular interest in the political ecology of northwest Mexico. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork and ethnohistorical research in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico since 1971, and received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Arizona in 1983.

Maribel Alvarez, Ph.D., is assistant research social scientist and public folklorist, with a joint appointment in the Southwest Center and the University of Arizona Department of English. She holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Arizona. Her appointment begins in August 2004.

Affiliated

Tom Bowen, Bill Broyles, Jim Griffith, Susan Penfield, Gregory McNamee, Kathie M'Closky, Sammie Ann Wicks, and David Laird are research associates at the Southwest Center. Pat O'Brien is adjunct professor with the Southwest Center and cultural resources specialist with the National Park Service. Larry Norris is adjunct professor with the Southwest Center and natural resources specialist and program coordinator with the National Park Service. Helen Ingram is research fellow and professor emerita at the Southwest Center and holds the Warmington Chair in the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine.