We welcome Professor Jennifer Jenkins as the new director for the Southwest Center!

SBS Mexico Initiatives welcomes and congratulates Dr. Jennifer Jenkins on her appointment as the new Director of the Southwest Center at the University of Arizona. Doctor Jenkins is a longtime collaborator with programs, scholars, and institutions from Mexico such as El Colegio de San Luis ,and she is a member of our specialist network on Mexico at the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. We look forward to collaborate with her and her team! She is a wonderful scholar and we are sure she move the SWC into great successes.

As a distinguished scholar holding advanced degrees in both American literatures & cultures and Information Science, Dr. Jenkins brings an interdisciplinary lens to Southwest Studies, with special emphasis on cinema history in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands (Southwest Center). Her groundbreaking work includes founding Home Movie Day Tucson and the Tombstone Home Movie Project—archiving hundreds of amateur films from the Arizona‑Sonora region—and leading innovative Tribesourcing initiatives that reinterpret mid-century educational films with Native narrations. These efforts have earned significant support from the National Endowment for the Humanities (Southwest Center).

Dr. Jenkins has served as Director of the Bear Canyon Center for Southwest Humanities, curating exhibits, local film festivals, and working to preserve the visual, literary, and community-based cultures of the Southwest (University of Arizona Info Science). She was awarded a 2024 CUES Distinguished Fellowship for her Querencia project, which integrates place-based, archival, and Native Ways of Knowing into regional curricula for Southwest Studies (Southwest Center).

In her new role, Dr. Jenkins will guide the Southwest Center’s mission to foster interdisciplinary research, publication, and community outreach related to the Greater Southwest—with special emphasis on building institutional ties in the Republic of Mexico and serving the region’s rich cultural diversity (Southwest Center NEH Landmarks).

Please join us in celebrating Dr. Jenkins’s appointment. Her vision, leadership, and scholarship promise to strengthen the Center’s impact in advancing Southwest cultural studies, regional engagement, and inclusive histories.

Congratulations to the academic community of the Southwest Center and to professor Jennifer Jenkins!