Kendra Gage is a historian who specializes in topics including international women's and U.S. sports, African American resistance and social movements, 20th-century America, and the U.S. West. She is also well-regarded for her advocacy on teaching educators about implicit bias and anti-racism in the classroom.

After obtaining her Ph.D. in history from UNLV, Gage joined the faculty in 2011 as an assistant professor with the Department of Interdisciplinary, Gender, and Ethnic Studies. Her manuscript,  "Creating the Black California Dream: Virna Canson and the Black Freedom Struggle in the Golden State's Capital, 1940-1988," used the life of Virna Canson as lens for incorporating Sacramento's activities within the larger historical framework of the civil rights movement.

Gage is also one of the founders of the Race, Indigeneity, and Freedom Lab, which is an intensive interdisciplinary research lab for the creative study, thinking, and teaching on race, racism, and liberation in the Mountain West and beyond.

Mark Padoongpatt, an associate professor within UNLV's Department of Interdisciplinary, Gender, and Ethnic Studies, serves as director of the Asian and Asian American Studies program. 

Padoongpatt researches and writes on the histories of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the 20th-century United States, with a focus on empire, migration, race, and urban and suburban cultures. His Ph.D. thesis-turned-book, Flavors of Empire: Food and the Making of Thai America (University of California Press, 2017) — which explores how and why Thai food shaped the contours of Thai American community and identity since World War II — landed him an appearance on Padma Lakshmi's Hulu show "Taste the Nation." Padoongpatt is currently writing a book and developing a podcast series on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Las Vegas titled "Neon Pacific," which explores histories of race, space, and placemaking in Vegas.

At UNLV, Padoongpatt teaches a range of courses in Asian American Studies and on the interdisciplinary research process, including Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies, Interdisciplinary Research Methods, and the Interdisciplinary Capstone class.

Amy Reed-Sandoval is an associate professor of philosophy and participating faculty in UNLV's Latinx and Latin American Studies program. Her areas of expertise include political philosophy, with a special interest in issues of migration; Latin American and Latinx philosophies; bioethics; and feminist philosophy.

Reed-Sandoval's most recent research explores how crossing U.S. state and national borders for pregnancy-related medical care (including prenatal care, labor and delivery, and abortion care) impacts pregnant people’s self-trust and autonomy. She also studies what these medical encounters and related experiences can teach us about gender and global justice.

She is the founding director of the Philosophy for Children in the Borderlands program in El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. During the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, she launched its offshoot — Philosophy for Children Without Borders, a free online philosophy course for Spanish-speaking children and youth.

Reed-Sandoval is the author of Socially Undocumented: Identity and Immigration Justice (Oxford University Press, 2020).

Gloria Wong-Padoongpatt is a social psychologist whose research focuses on mental health issues among marginalized individuals. Her primary line of research examines the stressful impact of everyday racism, also known as microaggressions. Wong-Padoongpatt investigates the impact, mechanisms, and individual variations in stress responses to these everyday slights and denigrations. Her research program on microaggressions addresses three major gaps: experimentally tests if marginalized individuals experience stress from microaggressions; examines threats to self-concepts as possible mediators of microaggression-generated stress; and investigates individual differences in personality traits as moderators of the microaggression effect.  

Her research also examines ethnic and gender differences in risk factors for addictions, mainly gambling and video game addictions. Her research aims to assess the patterns of gambling behavior and the co-morbidity of gambling problems with other psychological problems; determine whether the psychosocial risk factors associated with gambling are specifically related to gambling or are generically related to any mental health disorder; and examine novel and understudied risk factors for gambling.    

Wong-Padoongpatt's research has been published in the Journal of Counseling Psychology, Race and Social Problems, and the Journal of Gambling Studies, among others. In addition to her research, Wong-Padoongpatt serves as the secretary/historian for the Asian American Psychological Association.

Stewart Chang — a recognized authority in family law, critical race theory, immigration law, and domestic violence — is a professor with the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law and a co-facilitator of the school's Race, Gender & Policing Program.

Chang writes and conducts research in areas of comparative law, family law, and immigration law with a focus on how those areas intersect with race, gender, and sexuality. He teaches courses including Contracts and Asian Americans and the Law.

Prior to joining Boyd in 2018, he was a law professor and director of the Center for International and Comparative Law at Whittier Law School. Before becoming a professor, he practiced public interest law for over a decade with the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California, where he specialized in domestic violence, immigration, and family law.

Chang's work has been published in academic journals, including the Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society.

Frank Rudy Cooper is the director of the Program on Race, Gender & Policing at UNLV's William S. Boyd School of Law.

Cooper's expertise includes the intersection of race and law, in addition to civil rights, critical race theory, and diversity and inclusion. He also conducts research centered on feminist theory, gender and the law, and masculinity theory. He is often called upon by local and national media to provide insight into current issues including police reform and police brutality. 

Prior to UNLV, Cooper practiced law in Boston and taught at Villanova University School of Law, Boston College Law School, and Suffolk University Law School.

His work has been published in journals including the Boston University Law Review, the University of California, Davis Law Review, the University of Illinois Law Review, and the Arizona State Law Journal.

Iesha Jackson, an associate professor of teacher education in the Department of Teaching and Learning, is an expert on improving educational outcomes for students of color in urban schools.

Her published research calls attention to the need for equity-based reforms in practices and policies at high schools and in higher education settings. In order to address this, her work frequently applies critical race theory and is situated in three main areas: student voice, culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogies, teacher education, and equity-based, macro-level education policies.

Jackson was featured in several Las Vegas news outlets for her leadership in UNLV's Rebel Academy, a summer program in which graduate students pursuing an accelerated alternative route to licensure (ARL) complete their practicum with local middle school students. Additionally, her service to the North Las Vegas community includes volunteering with several community-based organizations that serve Black and Latinx youth in the area.

In 2021, Jackson concluded a grant project that examined the life histories of in-service Black and Latinx ARL teachers and professional development needs for these teachers' retention. This work has become essential to her current framing of healing-centered pedagogies in urban education and is the basis of her co-edited book, The History of Now: Urban Education, Alternative Routes to Licensure, and the Oral Histories of Black and Latinx Educators.

Katrina Liu is an associate professor within UNLV's College of Education. Her research focuses on theory, practice, and innovation in preparing quality teachers to teach in diverse classrooms. She also has deep expertise in obtaining and managing high-dollar external grants.

Liu — who has collaborated on research with multiple schools within the Clark County School District — is most recently studying critical reflection for transformative learning in teacher education, preparing and supporting teachers and teacher educators of color, and preparing globally minded teachers. Her interdisciplinary work has appeared in journals such as Review of Research in Education, Educational Review, Journal of Teacher Education and Technology, and Reflective Practice.