Weirong Guo
(she/her)
Assistant Professor of Teaching
Department of Sociology

Weirong Guo is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Department of Sociology at UC Riverside. Prior to joining UC Riverside, she held postdoctoral positions at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania. She received her PhD in sociology from Emory University in 2023.

As a cultural and political sociologist of migration, Dr. Guo studies transnational political (dis)engagement among migrants from authoritarian countries. Her current book project, Between Nations: How Chinese Students Navigate Transnational Identity and Global Politics, examines how transnational Chinese youth negotiate their racial, national, and global identities amid the rise of anti-Asian racism and tense China-U.S. geopolitics. Her research has been published in Social Forces, Social Problems, Cultural Sociology, Social Psychology Quarterly, and Ethnic & Racial Studies.

Gonzalo Reyes Rodriguez
(he/him)
Assistant Professor
Department of Art

Gonzalo Reyes Rodriguez is an artist working with photography and film/video to examine the temporal ambiguity of our experience of images—still but in motion, historical yet continuously made present. His work has been featured in Aperture, Artforum, C Magazine, the New York Times, Terremoto MX, and is in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others. He has published essays, interviews, and reviews in Border Crossings, Public Parking, and various exhibition publications. Previous appointments include Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver, Parsons School of Design in New York City, and the University of Illinois, Chicago. He received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. In 2019, he was a participant at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture.

Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Professor
Department of Creative Writing

Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of four novels, most recently Happy Land (2025), which was longlisted for the 2026 Aspen Words Literary Prize and won the 2026 Southern Book Prize. Her previous novel Take My Hand was awarded a 2023 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association, Fiction Award from Black Caucus of the American Library Association, and was longlisted for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. Her novels resurrect forgotten stories in the archives of African American history. She is a former UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA and served as Associate Professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at American University before coming to UC Riverside.

Rana Sharif
(she/her/هي)
Assistant Professor
Department of Media and Cultural Studies

Kiera Midori Coulter
(she/her)
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychological and Brain Studies

Kiera Coulter is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Brain Studies at the University of California, Riverside. She holds a PhD in Public Health, with a minor in Family Studies and Human Development. Her interdisciplinary research program examines developmental processes among racially and ethnically minoritized youth through three primary research streams. First, she investigates linkages between sociocultural contexts and well-being to elucidate how ecological factors shape adjustment. Second, she examines assets of positive youth development to identify promotive factors of young people's developmental trajectories. Lastly, she designs and tests novel health interventions for diverse youth populations. This body of work is supported by participatory approaches that engage youth directly within intervention science research, as well as strengths-based frameworks that highlight youth's competencies that facilitate thriving.