May 25, 2017

The University of Houston was recently chosen to become headquarters of the Inter University Program for Latino Research (IUPLR) for the next five years, beginning in 2018. The IUPLR is a national consortium of 25 university-based Latino research centers, with the overarching purpose of addressing the pressing issues that impact Latino communities.

A member of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, IUPLR promotes and disseminates comparative, interdisciplinary, and policy-focused research; expands the pool of Latino scholars and leaders; establishes projects with scholars in the arts, STEM fields, social sciences, health, culture and the humanities; enhances the institutional capacity of Latino-focused research centers and supports the work that strengthens and serves Latino communities.

“I am thrilled that the University of Houston has been chosen to be the host institution for IUPLR for the next five years” said Paula Myrick Short, UH System senior vice chancellor for academic affairs and UH senior vice president for academic affairs and provost. “The national Latino population represents one in every eight Americans, and is our largest demographic at UH, representing 29% of our student population. I hope that by hosting IUPLR, we can expand our pool of Latino scholars and leaders, as well as foster research collaboratives between faculty. I thank Drs. Pamela Quiroz and Nicolás Kanellos for bringing this partnership to our campus and spearheading its implementation.”

IUPLR headquarters have been hosted by Stanford University, Hunter College, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Illinois – Chicago. IUPLR has been supported over the last thirty years by grants from the Ford Foundation, the National Science Foundation, Russell Sage, Rockefeller Foundation, Joyce Foundation, Andrew Mellon, and others.

Dr. Nicolás Kanellos will serve as the Executive Director of the consortium, and will collaborate with the Center for Mexican American Studies to further the goals of the IUPLR and promote further research on Latinos. Dr. Kanellos is currently the Brown Foundation Professor of Hispanic Studies and the Director of Arte Público Press and Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage. He has been at UH since 1980 and founded the nation’s oldest Hispanic publishing house, Arte Público Press, which is the largest non-profit publisher of literature in the United States. Through his work with the Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage program, he works to identify, preserve, study and make accessible hundreds of thousands of documents written in those regions that have become the United States from the colonial period to 1960.

In additional to their other work, IUPLR hosts SIGLO XXI, a Latino Studies biennial research conference, and co-hosts Latino Art Now!, a biennial conference dedicated to the current trends in Latino art with the Smithsonian Latino Center. Through the partnership with the Smithsonian Latino Center, graduate students can participate in summer internships at Smithsonian museums. IUPLR works with the U.S. Census Bureau as a designated Census Information Center, which uses census data in areas such as program planning, advocacy needs assessment, defining service areas, public policy development, developing new business enterprises, and conducting race/ethnic-related research. 

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About the University of Houston
The University of Houston is a Carnegie-designated Tier One public research university recognized by The Princeton Review as one of the nation’s best colleges for undergraduate education. UH serves the globally competitive Houston and Gulf Coast Region by providing world-class faculty, experiential learning and strategic industry partnerships. Located in the nation’s fourth-largest city, UH serves more than 39,500 students in the most ethnically and culturally diverse region in the country.