Current Affiliates
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Arturo Cortez, PhD (he/they)
Director and Founder of The LiTT Lab Arturo Cortez, PhD is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of California, Davis. As a learning scientist, Dr. Cortez explores how justice- and future-oriented contexts of teaching and learning can support educators and young people to imagine beyond today’s injustices. In particular, he is interested in how intergenerational and transdisciplinary collaboratives speculate new possible futures, mediated by their participation with everyday technologies in gaming contexts, for example. Dr. Cortez designed The Learning to Transform Technologies (LiTT) Lab to study how play-based learning environments encourage educators to engage in more symmetrical relationships with young people, while also developing expansive pedagogical models that center equitable relationship-building and robust collaboration. For the 2024-2025 academic year, Dr. Cortez will be a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow. Dr. Cortez is a former public school educator and holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. |
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Mariel Reyes- Galvez (she/they)
Undergraduate Student Researcher | Educator | Designer At the LiTT Lab, Mariel serves as a Research Assistant, Curriculum Developer, and Video Game Developer. Through her exploration of media with secondary students at Empower Community High School, they exercise socio-political imagination through creative mediums. Mari’s students push her to gain a deeper understanding of the intersectionality between our work and the everyday systems in which we participate. Mariel is a gamer, coder, and creative who burns for opportunities to model a better world. Mari also strives to cultivate spaces where learners and educators can center joy as they question the world around them. She is currently an undergraduate at The University of Colorado Denver majoring in Sociology. |
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Edward Rivero, PhD
Faculty Affiliate Eddie Rivero, PhD is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University in the Bilingual/Bicultural Education program. His research examines the linguistic practices, digital literacies, and sociopolitical meaning-making that young people develop through their everyday media and play activities, with a particular emphasis on emergent bilingual youth. Eddie is interested in how teachers can leverage these activities to design culturally responsive and equitable learning ecologies with and for students. He is a former postdoctoral associate with the LiTT Lab. |
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José Ramón Lizárraga, PhD
Faculty Affiliate Dr. José Ramón Lizárraga is an Assistant Professor of Learning Sciences and Human Development, and Affiliate in Information Sciences and LGBTQ Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. They also serve as a Senior Advisor with the Algorithmic Justice League. José is currently a Visiting Researcher and Project Manager of O @ BSE (Berkeley School of Education), leading all design, implementation, and research efforts. Dr. Lizárraga is an award-winning designer of online/hybrid learning environments whose internationally-recognized scholarly work focuses on the role of emergent technologies, AI, and media in the learning of individuals and communities. |
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Tiera Chanté Tanksley, PhD
Faculty Affiliate Dr. Tiera Tanksley’s scholarship bridges education, Black studies critical science and technology studies (STS) to examine how digital and artificially intelligent technologies impact the lives and schooling experiences of Black youth. Her work simultaneously recognizes Black youth as digital activists and civic agitators, and examines the complex ways they subvert, resist and rewrite racially biased technologies to produce more just and joyous digital experiences for Communities of Color across the diaspora. In 2022, Dr. Tanksley received the Emerging Leader in Critical Race Technology Studies Fellowship from UCLA, and in 2023 she was awarded the Op Ed Public Voices in Technology fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation. She received her PhD in Education from UCLA. |