URC-HASS Staff

Jacquelyn Ardam holds a PhD in English from UCLA. She is a specialist in modern and contemporary literature, especially poetry, and has taught at UCLA and Colby College. Her book Avidly Reads Poetry was published in 2022 by NYU Press.

Jacquelyn joined URC-HASS in 2019 and became the Director in 2022. She co-directs UCLA’s Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship as well as the summer Writing and Research Training Program for visiting Mellon Mays students. She is particularly interested in increasing the accessibility of undergraduate research experiences at UCLA. You can reach her at: jardam@college.ucla.edu.

Laura Ha Reizman received her Ph.D. in Asian Languages and Cultures from UCLA. Prior to joining the Undergraduate Research Center for the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, she was a postdoctoral fellow in Korean humanities at Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Reizman joined URC-HASS in 2023. She manages URFP, URSP, Keck, and the Summer Research Incubator. She previously co-led the Transfer Research Entry Program with URC Sciences. She loves working with graduate mentors and helping motivated undergraduates develop their research and professional skills during their time at UCLA.

Silveria Alvarado Luna grew up in Southern California and received their B.A. in History & Chicana/x/o Studies from UCLA. Silveria can be contacted at salvarado@college.ucla.edu.

Jon Bassinger-Flores is a committed higher education professional with over two decades of student service and office management experience. He was born and raised in Texas and received a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture degree from Texas A&M University. He later completed a Master of Divinity degree at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago and began his higher ed career by joining the McCormick staff. Prior to joining the URC-HASS staff, Jon worked for Ithaca College’s Los Angeles Program and at the Arizona State University California Center.

Lynette Dixon (she/her/hers) earned a Bachelor of Arts in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality from Emory University and a Master of Arts in African American and African Students from The Ohio State University. As a doctoral student at UCLA, her research utilizes black feminist thought, performance theory, and hip-hop studies to explore the techniques of embodiment Black women in popular culture employ to navigate, contest, and innovate performances of gender and sexuality.

Brie Johnson-Morris (she/her) is a PhD student studying linguistic and disability anthropology in the Caribbean. Her dissertation focuses on those living with Type 2 diabetes in Trinidad and Tobago. By looking at how discourses of personal responsibility ignore infrastructural causes of disability, she hopes to understand how these discourses affect people living with Type 2 diabetes. Her previous work focuses on identity management practices of people living with Long-Covid.

Greg is originally from Atlanta, GA. He received his BA in English and Neuroscience from Vanderbilt University, his MA in Global Studies from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and is a first year PhD student in the Sociology Department at UCLA. After receiving his BA, he founded a business providing executive functioning coaching to students with learning needs, taught a broad range of subject matter as a homeschool teacher, and worked in two psychology labs at Vanderbilt University. While studying at UNC Chapel Hill, he worked as Lead Teaching Assistant for Global Studies, as well as the Phillips Ambassadors Graduate Teaching Fellow.

After receiving his MA, he performed contracted research for United States Agency for International Development, Varieties of Democracy Institute, Digital Societies Project, and NORC at the University of Chicago. He also part-timed as a bartender and stand-up comedian in the wonderful town of Carrboro, North Carolina. Currently, his research interests are in examining ethnonationalist identity formation in rural communities in the Southeast United States. Namely, he is interested in how these identities are constituted through forms of labor, and how these identities articulate as supportive or resistive of environmental protectionism. He plans to use ethnographic and interview methods, coupled with survey instruments. Greg is passionate about teaching and mentorship, and he looks forward to working with the many bright minds at UCLA!

Sydney (she/her/hers) is a current PhD student in UCLA’s Information Studies Department. Sydney assumes an abolitionist lens when examining the description, and classification practices of political records, both formally and informally recognized. Sydney is also interested in the ways in which identity is commodified in political/public memory. Prior to beginning the PhD Program at UCLA, Sydney earned her Master’s in Library and Information Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Sydney also has 9 years of teaching experience and is passionate about making education accessible to her students.