Team
Administrators of the Mellon Public Humanities and Social Justice Program are celebrated professors, authors, lecturers and leaders who are committed to engaging diverse students in advanced research and higher learning.
Jay (Jeremiah) Perez-Torres is the Senior Public Fellow of the MPHSJ Program. He holds a doctorate from the Criminology program at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and has worked with the MPHSJ program for several years. Jay’s area of research centers around extremist propaganda and radicalization. Outside of academia he engages in foster youth advocacy work.
Media Fellows
Prisca Edwards is a queer documentary filmmaker and photographer focused on socially engaged storytelling. She holds an MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College and a BFA in Photojournalism from Rochester Institute of Technology. Her photography has been featured in WMN Zine: Taking Space, and her personal short film, Body Scans, was recognized by Toronto Film Magazine. Prisca recently completed her thesis film Out From Under, a short documentary centered on a workshop with six people living with endometriosis, using collage and conversation to explore collective experiences of illness. She is also a teaching artist and longtime mentor at Reel Works, where she supports emerging youth filmmakers in developing their voices through media.
Carlos Morales is a photographer and mixed media artist whose work often explores the interchange between solitude and space. His engagement with documentary photography began with his participation in Unseen America, a collaboration between the Workplace Project and The Center for the Study of Working Class Life at Stony Brook University. In addition to award- winning solo shows, Entre Sombras, fotofoto gallery (2015), and Rosie, Mills Pond Gallery (2018), several images from La Ruta, a video installation series, were selected for exhibition in the Pingyao International Photography Festival (2019). Recent projects include serving as Director of Latino Arts of Long Island (LALI); Out of the Pandemic (2020) and A Thousand Stories (2024), outdoor video projections exhibited at Gallery North; developing and teaching The Class (2020 - ), virtual photography workshops for diverse communities in Latin America, as well as the Family Association of the Inter-American Development Bank (2024-). He has been an IMA Make Space Fellow mentoring undergraduate students in the Mellon Public Humanities and Social Justice Scholars program since Fall 2022.