Iliana Reyes Named Mexico Faculty Fellow

"Borders were never abstract geopolitical lines for me," says Iliana Reyes, recently named Mexico Faculty Fellow within Arizona International's Global Partnerships and Initiatives. "They were lived spaces of negotiation, resilience, creativity and possibility."

A native Norteña raised in Sinaloa, Reyes crossed the border daily as a teenager, from Tijuana to attend UC San Diego. She navigated two countries, two languages and two educational worlds, and that experience drove her eventual calling as a scholar and researcher. She has spent her career examining what migration and displacement do to children, families and schools, and organizing her research and advocacy around those answers.

A Record of Binational Partnership

As an associate dean at the College of Education, director of the Borderlands Education Center (BEC) and professor in teaching, learning and sociocultural studies, Reyes brings two decades of relationship-building to the Mexico Faculty Fellow role. Through the BEC, she has helped develop and sustain long-term collaborations in teacher preparation and educational innovation with Mexican institutions including Universidad de Sonora (UNISON), Centro Regional de Formación Profesional Docente de Sonora (CRESON) and Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional (CINVESTAV) — partnerships built, Reyes says, with Mexican institutions rather than brought to them.

She has also led reciprocal study abroad programs in educator preparation and cultivated a sustained collaboration with Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) through its Center for Mexican Studies in Tucson. Together, they have advanced joint initiatives and academic exchanges that have brought Mexican students to the BEC for research residencies. For the bilingual and first-generation students who have participated in these programs, Reyes says, the experience changes something fundamental: "They start to see themselves as global professionals, connected to realities they may already carry but haven't yet named."

Initial Priorities

As Mexico Faculty Fellow, Reyes is working to map Mexico-related partnerships across U of A colleges and units, surface overlaps and gaps to create clearer pathways for faculty and students interested in engaging with Mexico through research, teaching, innovation and experiential learning. An advisory structure focused on emerging research opportunities and shared academic priorities is part of the design, as is deepening the university's partnership with UNAM as a lead strategic partner for joint research, graduate pathways and faculty-led exchange.

Her priorities include strengthening interdisciplinary networks, expanding collaborative research and external funding opportunities, supporting faculty- and student-mobility initiatives, exploring dual-degree and graduate education partnerships and deepening the university's strategic relationship with UNAM as a flagship partner for international research, innovation and academic exchange.

"This work has always moved through people, through relationships built one conversation, one year at a time," Reyes says. "The fellowship is a chance to bring those academic relationships into view across the whole university and to build on the established value of those connections."

"As Arizona's land-grant university, our relationship with Mexico is both a geographic advantage and an academic responsibility," Reyes says. "Together, we have an extraordinary opportunity to build partnerships that advance discovery, educate future leaders and address the shared research opportunities and challenges that shape our border region and our global future."