Director's Initiatives

Launched in March 2023, the  Dolores Huerta Research Center Legislative Fellows is a program that introduces students to the legislative process up close. Given Huerta's passion for civic engagement and the democratic process, this three-month fellowship opportunity is an ideal opportunity for a student interested in public service.

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Launched in Fall 2019, the Human Rights Investigations Lab for the   Americas is dedicated to offering digital verification support to non-governmental organizations, news outlets, and other advocacy partners that are conducting open-source investigations. Housed in the Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas (Huerta Center) at UC Santa Cruz, this lab harnesses digital technologies to address and confront human rights violations.

Watch a video about the Lab's research on the Chilean crisis here 

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Brazil is undergoing the deepest political crisis of its recent history following the impeachment process in 2016 of its first female president, Dilma Rousseff of the  Workers’ Party.

The Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas (Huerta Center) has created this new repository page to provide our community with access to the most pertinent news about this significant political crisis. 

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The Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas is honored to be part of a yearlong journalism project titled Escuchar, Compartir, Comunidad (Listen, Share, Community) in partnership with KZSC radio and the Digital Nest in Watsonville, California for 2018-19. 

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The Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas at UC Santa Cruz is committed to bridging Santa Cruz County communities and the university through a rigorous engagement with public scholarship and/or art. This residency program is an ideal way in which to introduce new collaborative opportunities for students and faculty with community leaders and artists.

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2019-2020: Chosen Family

Stars and Sequoias

Vanessa Alarcon (Astrophysics)

Looking up to remember family members far away, and with nature towering over, remembering chosen family expands from nature to the cosmos

 2018-2019: Love. Community. Home. 

 Divine

 First Place

 Emma McWaid (Art and Sociology)

 2017-2018: Home & Mobility 

 Family Makes Home

 First Place

 Alonso Hernandez (Politics)

Students in the Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program (URAP) established Nuestras Historias, the CLRC (now Huerta Center) archive. Led by then CLRC Graduate Student Researcher (GSR) and LALS graduate student, Alina Ivette Fernandez, this multi-phase project trained students in archival construction, archival, oral history, digital humanities methods, digital storytelling, and exhibition curation. 

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The CLRC (now Huerta Center) was honored to be part of Non-citizenship, UC Santa Cruz's 2016-17 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation John E. Sawyer Seminar on the Comparative Study of Culture. 

Our seminar shed light on the tiered membership—what we call the spectrum of belonging—structuring societies in various places and periods and sharpens our understanding of the ways in which the mobility and regulation of non-citizens affect and transform notions of participation, belonging, and the social contract.  

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