LOS ANGELES – Loyola Marymount University has faculty experts available to respond to media inquiries about Latinx Heritage Month. LMU professors can add context to stories about issues facing U.S. Latinx communities, such as immigration, environmental justice, educational justice and access, advancement in the workplace and faith traditions. They specialize in racial and ethic politics, Latinx art and artists, their influence in Los Angeles, and more.
LMU’s Latinx community hub, which facilitates connections for those who identify as Latine, Latinx, Latina, Latino or Hispanic and includes information about Heritage Month events on campus, can be found in the community hub.
Email news@lmu.edu, or call our Media Line, 310.258.4636, to request an interview with these and other LMU faculty members:
Allan Deck, S.J., Distinguished Scholar in Pastoral Theology and Latino Studies

Father Deck is the author or editor of nine books and more than 60 chapters on pastoral theology, Latino/a Studies, Catholic social teaching, spirituality and intercultural competence. He wrote a chapter on Latino/a youth and young adults’ disaffiliation with religion and developments related to the pandemic experience in “Faith and Spiritual Life of Young Adult Catholics,” to be published by Liturgical Press. He has served as a parish administrator, director of Hispanic ministry, founder and first executive director of the Loyola Institute for Spirituality, and co-founder and first president of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the U.S. He has served on many boards, including that of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.
Cecilia González-Andrieu, Professor of Theological Studies

Professor González-Andrieu can comment on stories about immigration, Latina/o/x Catholics, educational justice and access, environmental justice, Latinas and the Church, popular religion and devotions, Latinx arts and artists and social justice issues. González-Andrieu is one of the leading scholars of theological aesthetics, which she proposes as a way to bring communities together, respect and celebrate otherness, and lift the theological insights of those who know and express themselves from the peripheries in ways beyond the textual. She is a contributing writer to America, serves on the board of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the U.S., and is co-founder of LMU’s initiatives with undocumented students.
Fernando Guerra, Professor of Political Science and International Relations and Chicana/o Latina/o Studies

Professor Guerra is the founding director of LMU’s Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles, one of the nation’s top undergraduate research centers. A frequent media commentator, Guerra is an expert in local governance, urban politics, and racial and ethnic politics. He has been a principal investigator in more than 20 major studies on Los Angeles, leadership studies and electoral politics. He has done extensive research on the Latinx community in Los Angeles and California, specifically the Latinx vote. Guerra is also the principal investigator for the largest general social survey in the Los Angeles region.
Vanessa Díaz, Assistant Professor of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies

Professor Díaz is an interdisciplinary ethnographer, filmmaker, and journalist. Her research focuses on the ways race and gender impact labor markets and practices in the culture industries across the Americas. Her first book, “Manufacturing Celebrity: How Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters Build the Hollywood Industrial Complex,” was published by Duke University Press in 2020. Grounded in her experience as a red carpet reporter for People magazine, the book focuses on hierarchies of labor and ethnoracial and gender politics in the production of celebrity-focused media. She can speak on a range of topics, including the Latinx community in general, Puerto Rico/Puerto Ricans, Cuba/Cubans, media, popular culture, music, Hollywood, celebrity, race and ethnicity.