photos of the 3 phd candidates

PhD Candidates in Art History Awarded Prestigious LAII Fellowship

Beth Norwood, Bre Reiss, and Ellie Kane, three PhD candidates in art history, have all been awarded a Latin American and Iberian Institute Fellowship.
August 23, 2024

In addition to insurance and a stipend, the fellowship is renewable for a second year. For this scholarship, our students faced off against PhD candidates from departments like Political Science, Sociology, Anthropology, and History.

The LAII is part of a wide-reaching scholarly community at The University of New Mexico. Graduate students in departments across campus engage in dynamic research that spans disciplines and reaches across geographic boundaries. To support their efforts, the LAII offers competitive PhD Fellowship awards to doctoral students to support dissertation research and writing related to Latin America.

We congratulate our fellows on this remarkable achievement!

Learn more about the Latin American and Iberian Institute Fellowships >

Stephanie Woods art

Stephanie Woods sculpture acquired by Perry Art Collection

Stephanie J. Woods’ sculpture Never Quite, Sweet Enough I was acquired by the nationally recognized Perry Art Collection following her 2025 residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts. The work explores memory, legacy, and historical survival through an abstract porcelain form rooted in Black cultural history.

The forest

Kaitlin Bryson Selected for 2026 Cohort for Monument Lab Re:Generation!

Congratulations to Kaitlin Bryson for being selected to take part in the 2026 cohort for Monument Lab Re:Generation! She received a $100,000 grant for her ongoing project, Bellow Forth. Bellow Forth is a community project focused on restoring soil health and environmental resiliency through storytelling and collaboration, community and ecosystem science, and social art practice in wildfire-impacted lands and communities in northern New Mexico.

Eric-Paul Riege stands in his studio wearing woven sculptural jewelry and face paint, surrounded by fiber materials and tools.

Alum Highlight: Eric-Paul Riege Receives 2025 Trellis Art Fund Grant

Eric-Paul Riege, a Gallup-based Diné artist and recent UNM graduate, has been recognized as a 2025 Stepping Stone Grantee by the Trellis Art Fund. His multidisciplinary practice uses weaving as both process and philosophy, blending ancestral knowledge, spirituality, and contemporary art to create works that are living, mobile, and deeply connected to cultural memory.