Marissa Brookes is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Political Science department at the University of California, Riverside. She is also Faculty Co-Director of the UCR Inland Empire Labor and Community Center and a faculty affiliate of the UCR Labor Studies Program. Her research focuses on transnational labor activism, workforce development, and the politics of work and employment in the global economy. Her research has appeared in outlets such as Comparative Political Studies, Development and Change, the Global Labour Journal, and Qualitative and Multi-Method Research. Her book, The New Politics of Transnational Labor: Why Some Alliances Succeed (Cornell University Press) analyzes the causes of success and failure in transnational labor campaigns. On invitation, she has presented her research at the Center for Advanced Study in Oslo, the ILO in Geneva, the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung in Berlin, The Worker Institute in New York, USAID in Washington, DC, and the ILR School at Cornell University, among other venues. Dr. Brookes teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in international relations, international political economy, labor studies, and qualitative methods. She earned her Ph.D. in political science from Northwestern University.

Ellen Reese is Professor and Acting Vice-Chair of Society, Environment, and Health Equity, and Chair of Labor Studies at the University of California Riverside. Her research focuses on gender, race, and class, welfare state development, social movements, and poverty and work.  She is co-author of Unsustainable: Amazon, Warehousing, and the Politics of Exploitation (2023, University of California Press), and co-editor of The Cost of Free Shipping: Amazon in the Global Economy (Pluto Press, 2020), which won the 2020-21 Award for Best Book Related to Labor Education from the United Association of Labor Education. She is also the author of They Say Cutback; We Say Fightback! Welfare Activism in an Era of Retrenchment (2011, American Sociological Association’s Rose Series) and Backlash Against Welfare Mothers: Past and Present (2005, University of California Press), co-author of The World Social Forums and the Challenges of Global Democracy (2007, Paradigm Publishers), co-editor of The Wages of Empire: Neoliberal Policies, Repression, and Women’s Poverty (2007, Paradigm Publishers) and co-editor of A Handbook of World Social Forum Activism (2012, Paradigm Publishers).

Zoe Caras is Inland Empire Labor and Community Center’s Project Coordinator. She comes to the position with a background as a labor, environmental, and community organizer, researcher, and educator. Zoe is passionate about the power of working people, political education, prison abolition, internationalist organizing, and racial and environmental justice. She received her B.A. in 2015 from Prescott College, where she studied Social Movement History and Community Organizing. After graduating, she worked with indigenous field guides to start a union in the tourism industry as part of a larger land rights campaign. In 2018, Zoe attended CUNY’s School of Labor and Urban Studies Union Semester, where she organized with the National Domestic Workers Alliance and New York Caring Majority. She is trained in Strategic Corporate Research from Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. As a researcher at ROC United, a restaurant workers’ center, Zoe coordinated projects including a National Research Panel of 1,000 restaurant workers tracking COVID-19’s impact on the industry; the “State of the Restaurant Workforce” report, which compiled data into a comprehensive report on the industry; and trained and mentored research fellows. Zoe hopes to support students to join the labor movement as workers and organizers as well as to build the power of working people and their communities across the Inland Empire and California. She aspires to bring a collaborative presence to IELCC and is excited to connect with students, staff, faculty, and community members– please reach out to her anytime!

Gregory Blake Hutchins is currently a Ph.D. Graduate Student in the Political Science Department at the University of California, Riverside where he received his M.A. degree in 2022. His concentrations are in Mass Political Behavior and International Relations. He serves as Chief of Staff and Assistant to the Faculty Co-Directors for UCR's Inland Empire Labor and Community Center.  In addition to his academic work, Greg is also a member of the Pick Group of Young Professionals, a network of young community members working towards engaging Riverside to be a better place to live while pursuing excellence in the workplace, where he serves as the Vice-Chair of the Civic Engagement Committee. Lastly, Greg is also a Riverside City Commissioner sitting on the Budget Engagement Commission.

Michael Bates is an Assistant Professor of Economics. His research focuses on labor economics, the economics of education, and applied econometrics. In particular, he studies teacher labor markets and how education policy impacts economically disadvantaged students’ access to highly effective teachers. His work appears in the Journal of Labor Economics, the Economics of Education Review, and the Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics. Dr. Bates teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in labor economics, labor supply, and microeconomic research methods. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics from Michigan State University in 2015. Before seeking his doctorate he taught middle school in Chicago, IL, and Lansing, MI, initially with Teach for America.

Richard T. Rodríguez is a Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside. He specializes in Latina/o/x literary and cultural studies, film and visual culture, and gender and sexuality studies, and holds additional interests in transnational cultural studies, labor studies, popular music studies, and comparative ethnic studies. After receiving his BA in English from UC Berkeley and Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness from UC Santa Cruz, he taught for several years at Cal State LA and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign before joining the UC Riverside faculty in 2016. The author of Next of Kin: The Family in Chicano/a Cultural Politics (Duke University Press, 2009), which won the 2011 National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Book Award, and A Kiss across the Ocean: Transatlantic Intimacies of British Post-Punk and U.S. Latinidad (Duke University Press, 2022), he is currently completing Undocumented Desires: Fantasies of Latino Male Sexuality. With Martin F. Manalansan IV, Chantal Nadeau, and Siobhan B. Somerville, he coedited a special issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies titled “Queering the Middle: Race, Region and a Queer Midwest.” His work has appeared in the journals Social Text, Cultural Dynamics, Latino Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies, Biography, American Literary History, Profession, Palimpsest, Aztlán, and American Quarterly, and in various edited collections including The Cambridge Companion to Latina/o American Literature, Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A., The Routledge Queer Studies Reader, Latino/a Literature in the Classroom, Gay Latino Studies: A Critical Reader, A Concise Companion to American Studies, and Graphic Borders: Latino Comic Books Past, Present, and Future. The Moving Image Review Editor of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, he also serves or has served on the editorial boards of American Literary History, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, Latino Studies, and InVisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture. In addition, he currently serves on the PMLA Advisory Committee. The 2019 recipient of the Richard A. Yarborough Mentoring Award, granted by the Minority Scholars' Committee of the American Studies Association, he is the co-principal investigator on a University of California MRPI grant titled "The Global Latinidades Project: Globalizing Latinx Studies for the Next Millennium."