Fantasia Painter, global and international studies assistant professor, studies the U.S.-Mexico border and the ways in which Indigenous people and others are impacted by it. Her work, which has been published in the American Indian Culture and Research Journal, aims to rethink global borders from an Indigenous perspective. An enrolled member of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, Painter is excited to be joining UCI’s up-and-coming Department of Global and International Studies and contributing in particular to the campus’s Indigenous studies initiatives. 

Painter earned her bachelor’s at Columbia University and her master’s and Ph.D. at UC Berkeley. She spent the past year at UC Davis as a postdoctoral fellow. As a new member of the UCI faculty, she’s happy to be joining a research community and university system ranked among the highest in the nation.