Current Fellows
Post-Doctoral Fellow 2026-2027
Camila M. Belliard, PhD
Camila M. Belliard (she/they) is a Frederick Douglass Institute Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Black Studies at the University of Rochester. She earned a PhD in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick as a Fulbright International Scholar, and a degree in Social Anthropology from the University of Chile. Their research centers Black, migrant, femme, and LGBTQ+ communities through a transnational lens in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Research Overview
Her work initially focused on the intersections of anti-black racism and gender configurations in South-South in Chile. Her current focus in the Dominican Republic started 10 years ago with research in gender inequality and violence, black and Dominican-Haitian heritage, and healing justice. During the Postdoctoral Dr. Belliard will continue their dissertation project titled “Being Black, Trans and Femme in the Dominican Republic: Embodying and Resisting Surround Violence”, through a digital humanities project memorializing the life histories of Trans and Black femmes’ and the book project which follows their experience of resistance to violence in the DR.
Dr. Belliard also co-founded and coordinated the Racial Justice Learning Community (RAJU), an inaugural program at Rutgers’ Institute for Global Racial Justice, where they mentored cohorts of undergraduate students. Beyond the university, they have collaborated with activist and non-profit organizations on sexual reproductive rights and gender education.
Research Interests
Caribbean and Latinx Studies; South-South Migration; Violence; Coloniality and Colonialism, Black Feminist Theory and Praxis; Queer of Color Critique; Trans and Gender Studies; Feminist Ethnography; Afro-Caribbean epistemologies, Healing Justice
CV: CamilaBelliard_AcademicCV2026.pdf
Post-Doctoral Fellow 2025-2026
Alex Thomas
Alex Thomas (they/them/theirs) is a postdoctoral fellow at the Frederick Douglass Institute and the Department of Black Studies at the University of Rochester. They earned their PhD in Communication from the University of Maryland College Park with a certificate in Digital Studies in Arts and Humanities. While there, Alex aided in the foundation of the Black Communication and Technology Lab as a Graduate Fellow and served as a graduate ambassador.
Research Overview
Dr. Thomas’s research draws upon and combines environmental and visual communication, digital humanities, media studies, cultural studies, and Black feminism to address how social issues intersect with or are showcased through many different visual mediums. They study texts from across various forms of visual media including cinema and animation, photography, social media, and visual literature to examine how those who create and consume media influence, critique, and reflect on social issues widely and communication about the environment more specifically. Their interests also include research on the use of digital media for activism and how critique of popular media can challenge and change society for the better.
Dr. Thomas’s previous research covers topics such as the impact of certain social networks on Twitter, Black fandoms using hashtags to gain awareness to cosplay, the ability of environmental photography to capture climate change, drag and appropriation on TikTok, and issues of gender and race in environmental popular culture. Their article, “Craig of the Creek: Black Childhood and environmental racism”, published in Critical Studies in Media Communication, focuses on animation as an important source of environmental imagery for children to learn the relationship between race and environmental issues.
Their research is methodologically diverse using both critical and qualitative methods to interrogate how media and popular culture are used to circulate and oppose new ideas and histories of discriminated people and the environment. They are currently working on their first manuscript based on their PhD dissertation, “The Queer Ecology of Monstrosity: Troubling the Human/Nature Divide”.
Research Interests
Queer Ecology; Environmental Communication; Visual Media and Rhetoric, Black Feminist Theory; Cultural Studies; Digital Humanities
Email: athom70@ur.rochester.edu