Current Fellows

Meet the 2024-25 Fellows

Michael Lettieri

Senior Fellow for Human Rights
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Michael Lettieri is a Senior Fellow for Human Rights at USMEX. His work has explored the political culture and authoritarian politics in 20th Century Mexico, journalism and threats to freedom of expression during the drug war and gender-based violence.

He is the co-founder and managing editor of the Mexico Violence Resource Project and has written broadly about the intersections between democracy, security policy, organized crime and violence. His current work includes a study of foreign media coverage of the Mexican drug war, and an effort to develop new digital tools for documenting disappearances in partnership with local activists in Sinaloa.

He holds a Ph.D. in modern Latin American history from UC San Diego and previously worked at the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego where he managed programs on human rights and the border region.
Alan Sweedler

Senior Advisor for Energy and Environment
Email | 858-344-2685

Alan Sweedler is Senior Advisor for Energy and Environment at USMEX where his expertise is in the area of energy policy, technology and environmental impacts of energy use, especially climate change and the energy-water nexus. Sweedler was a Congressional Science Fellow and worked in the U.S. Senate on issues of energy, water and national security. He was also a Carnegie Foundation Science Fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Arms Control and was a visiting scholar at the University of California’s Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation as well as director of the California Energy Commission’s Energy Innovation Small Grants Program. He has edited, co-edited and contributed chapters to books dealing with energy, air quality, security and climate change with a focus on the U.S.-Mexico border region. He recently retired from San Diego State University, where he was associate vice president in charge of the university’s international programs, director of the Center for Energy Studies and a professor of physics. He currently holds a PIMSE Chair as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at CETYS University in Mexico and serves on the Congressionally mandated Good Neighbor Environmental Board (GNEB).
John B. McNeece III

Senior Advisor for Energy and Trade
Email | 619-888-4889

John McNeece is Senior Advisor for Energy and Trade at USMEX. His work in Mexico extends back to the NAFTA negotiations, where he served as an advisor on issues of Mexican law to the Office of the United States Trade Representative negotiating team for NAFTA Chapter Nineteen: Review and Dispute Settlement in Antidumping/Countervailing Duty Matters.

McNeece’s transactional work in Mexico included legal advice on formation of cross-border joint ventures, acquisition and development of renewable energy projects, complex financial transactions, mergers and acquisitions and venture capital transactions. He has written extensively on the Mexican energy Reform in the power sector.

McNeece is a graduate of Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley Law School. He is also an attorney who worked with the international law firm of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, LLP working out of the firm’s San Diego and New York offices until his retirement from the practice of law in July 2017. At Pillsbury, he was a member of the Latin America, Energy and Corporate & Securities practices.
Sandra Rebok

Researcher and Historian of Science, UC San Diego
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Trained as an anthropologist and sociologist, Sandra works in the history of modern science, conducting research that crosses the boundaries of nations and disciplines. She maps the networks and exchanges that emerged in Europe and the Americas after the French Revolution.

Her work has been published in German, Spanish, English, and French; and since 2000 she has participated in numerous international conferences, and given lectures in 22 different countries in Europe, North America, South America, Africa and Australia.

She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Heidelberg. She has also studied at the Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca in Madrid, and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. From 1998 to 2016 Sandra worked at the Spanish National Research Council in Madrid and has held significant fellowships mainly in Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Hispanoamerica and the United States, awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Spanish National Research Council, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, the European Commission  Research Executive Agency, the Bogliasco Foundation or the German Scholars Organization, among others.
Antonella Bandiera

Assistant Professor, ITAM
she/her | Email

She is an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science at ITAM in Mexico City (on leave) for the Political Economy, Causal Inference, and Program Evaluation courses.

Antonella studies historical and contemporary challenges to the effective functioning of the state in Latin America. Her work focuses on non-state armed actors, forced displacement, and migration, exploring the interplay between these phenomena and political and economic development. In addition to investigating the causes and consequences of bad governance, her recent projects seek to identify policies that can break this cycle, mitigating the effects of non-state armed actors and improving the integration of displaced populations. Antonella tackles these questions by combining quasi-experimental and experimental designs with intensive fieldwork.

She holds a master's degree and Ph.D. in political science from NYU and a B.A. in political science from Universidad de San Andrés, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
James Gerber

Emeritus Professor of Economics, San Diego State University; and Non-resident Scholar, Rice University Center for U.S. and Mexico
he/him | Email

Dr. James Gerber lives on the border with Mexico where he researches Latin American economies and US-Mexico relations. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of California, Davis, and has taught at San Diego State University since 1985. He has served as the Director of the Center for Latin American Studies at SDSU (2002-2009), and as the Director of the International Business Program (2009-2012). Currently, he is full time in the Economics Department. He has been a visiting professor in several countries, including Mexico, Canada, and Chile.
Rebecca Bell-Martin

Assistant Professor of Political Science, el Tecnológico de Monterrey
she/her | Email | @rbellmartin

She is an assistant professor of political science at el Tecnológico de Monterrey, México. Her work bridges debates from comparative politics and international relations. Rebecca investigates questions related to: political behavior in violent contexts, the politics of criminal violence, and political participation in the Global South.

She also explores these questions through a combination of qualitative, quantitative, and experimental methods and has extensive experience conducting field research in Latin America.

In Residence: Predoctoral Students

Jorge Raul Moreno Plasencia

Political Science, UC Santa Barbara
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Research Project: Abrazos, No Balazos? Income Inequality, Redistribution and the Reduction of Cartel Violence in Mexico
Tatyana Castillo-Ramos

Religious Studies, Yale University
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Research Project: Border Faith, Border Fields: Religions and Immigrant Rights Activism at the San Diego-Tijuana Border
Daira Arana
Public Policy, Tec de Monterrey
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Research Project: La constabularización de las Fuerzas Armadas en América Latina. Un estudio comparado México – Brasil
Tannya Islas
Anthropology, UC Irvine
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Research Project: Borderfields: Agrarian Transnationalism, Seasonality, and Climate Change across the US and Mexico
Brenda Noemi Hernandez Meneses
Latin American Politics, Universidad Autonoma de Baja California
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Research Project: The crisis of forced displacement: the case of Honduras, El Salvador, and Mexico
Raul Bejarano Romero

Public Health, UC San Diego
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Research Project: Exploring the Relationship Between Community Violence Exposure and HIV Risk Behavior Among People Who Inject Drugs in the US-Mexico Border: A Mixed-Methods Study