Gicela Medina graduated from California Lutheran University in 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and minors in Ethnic Studies and Global Studies. She is now a third-year student in the Hispanic Studies Ph.D. program at Washington University in St. Louis where she is also pursuing a graduate certificate in American Culture Studies. Her research focuses on Afro-Central American literature and culture with a special interest on race, gender, migration, and the intersections of these among the Afro-Central American Diaspora.
In 2021 Gicela was a recipient of The Divided City’s Summer Research Graduate Fellowship for her podcast project: Street Politics Across the Americas (SPAA) which was co-hosted by fellow graduate student, Rodrigo Viqueira. In 2022, she was also selected as one of the recipients of the Eva Sichel Essay Prize awarded to Hispanic Studies students at WashU for her paper titled “Garífuna Women’s Body: A Site of History and Memory of Afro-Caribbean Culture.”
Around campus, Gicela has also had the opportunity to work with The Divided City, an Urban Humanities Initiative, as a graduate student assistant and is now also serving in the same position for WashU’s Center for Race Ethnicity and Equity (CRE2).