The Department of Borderlands and Ethnic Studies at New Mexico State University will showcase its new research center as part of Research and Creativity Week at NMSU.

Faculty members from the department known as BEST will come together Wednesday, Feb. 28, to unveil their new center and discuss several current projects that highlight their mission to decolonize research. The event begins at 10 a.m. in the BEST offices on the second floor of Garcia Center. 

“The BEST Research Center uses decolonial frameworks as its foundation to prioritize and empower marginalized communities,” said Dulcinea Lara, BEST department head. “It will contribute to research and scholarship in the field of social justice and advocate for inclusive and equitable research environments.”

Established in 2019, BEST provides programs in relational ethnic studies, Native American studies, Chicana/Chicano studies, decolonial research and Palestine studies, and equitable research environments. It offers three undergraduate minors and two graduate certificates. 

Manal Hamzeh, professor and director of the BEST Research Center, will deliver opening remarks at the showcase event. Yoshi Iwasaki, dean of the College of Health, Education and Social Transformation, will also speak.

“We will showcase BEST’s research projects as the foundation of our new research center. We envision it as a hub of creativity, forward-thinking and sustainable practices that foster ethnic studies and place-based learning for all New Mexicans,” Hamzeh said. “It is exciting to be part of the beginnings of BEST’s Research Center at a moment when the College of HEST is building a new culture of research propelled by a vision of social transformation.”

Through its projects, the BEST Research Center aim to raise awareness of New Mexico’s multiethnic communities through communication and collaboration, with the goal of healing racialized oppression, discrimination and epistemicide, Lara said. 

BEST projects are based on intentional collaborations with communities, whether they are faculty across other colleges, high school and college students, pre-service and in-service teachers, or policymakers, Hamzeh added.

“At the BEST Research Center, we are guided by a critical inquiry paradigm that values ‘colonized’ peoples’ knowledges and embodies relationality, deep trust, radical love and desire for harmony,” said Hamzeh, who teaches courses in the new Decolonial Research Methodologies graduate certificate and two new Palestine studies courses. “We are committed to co-creating knowledges grounded in place-based histories and context and imagining approaches to research without epistemic violence, knowledge extraction and racial-colonial injustices.”

One BEST project, “Indigenizing Public Art at NMSU,” is a collaborative re-representation of Indigenous people and their cultures through public art on campus. Diego Medina, a member of the Piro-Manso-Tiwa tribe and NMSU alumnus, designed the first mural in a stairway that leads to the BEST offices in Garcia Center.

Other projects include the “Trotando Pasos Ajenos: Social Justice and Inequalities in the Borderlands” traveling exhibit developed by Lara and Nicholas Natividad, a professor of criminal justice at NMSU; a new film in the Peoples of New Mexico Film series; a mobile museum initiative; and several K-12 classroom resources and curricula.

The Feb. 28 event will conclude around noon with closing remarks from Lara. A reception with refreshments will follow. It is free and open to the public.

For more information about BEST, visit https://best.nmsu.edu/index.html. For more information about Research and Creativity Week, visit https://research.nmsu.edu/Other/RCW/index.html .

The full article can be seen at https://newsroom.nmsu.edu/news/nmsu-borderlands-and-ethnic-studies-department-to-unveil-new-research-center/s/72fd59b8-eb91-4670-b059-060ceacb4b39