Myrriah Gómez to lead SHRI as interim director

UNM Associate Professor Myrriah Gómez has been named as interim director of the Southwest Hispanic Research Institute at UNM. Gómez, who teaches in the Honors College, is a longtime member of SHRI and replaces former director Irene Vásquez, who will continue to lead the Department of Chicana & Chicano Studies. Gómez’s research interests include Chicanx and Indigenous literature; New Mexico critical regional studies; and nuclear cultural studies. In 2022, she published Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos, which won several prestigious awards.  She also is the faculty coordinator for UNM’s Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program and leads the Conexiones-Spain study abroad program in Cáceres, Spain.