The Regeneración Lab is grounded in the rebellious political concept of regeneración that emerged in the late nineteenth century and inspired the 1910 Mexican revolution. Our work centers community-based research justice, creative-critical practices, media, and decolonial praxis.

Why Regeneración?

We are named after the anarchist newspaper Regeneración, published by the Flores Magón brothers from 1900-1918. Our lab carries forward their spirit of radical critique while centering Indigenous epistemologies and antiracism often erased in traditional anarchist narratives.

The Regeneración newspaper, in its various formations, was the highest circulating Spanish language newspaper of its time, and sometimes included English and Italian language sections. It was read by hundreds of thousands of people across the world and often read aloud for those who were illiterate. But Regeneración was also part of a larger insurgent publishing network at the turn of the 20th century structured around community-based media, first person accounts and testimonials, investigative reporting, translation, poetry, fiction, plays, music, comics and print art, public speeches and street corner conversations, and early engagements with photography and cinema. Many of the authors included in these alternative newspapers were Indigenous, Black, Mestizo, Feminists, Queers, Immigrants, workers, peasants, political and poverty prisoners, religious minorities, and other people who could not get their voices covered in mainstream media. Their publications were often repressed and criminalized, with authors and interviewees risking death or incarceration to speak truth to power. We honor their legacy in opening the door for community-based media through our research justice work today.

Our Approach

We create space for research, dialogue, and cultural production that challenges settler-colonial frameworks and imagines otherwise. Our work brings together scholars, artists, community members, and activists working at the intersections of Indigenous studies, ethnic studies, border politics, environmental justice, women of color feminisms, queer theory, and decolonial theory.

We are particularly interested in archives, museums, community stories and historiographies, website and social media projects, film, pop ed and critical pedagogy, creative writing, mapping and cartographies, oral history, cultural revitalization, land and water based projects, constructing autonomy, transformative justice, and intergenerational work.

Director / Principle Investigator