Dr. Mercedes Lynn de Uriarte Named Graduate Commencement Speaker

Dr. Mercedes Lynn de Uriarte has long combined presswork and an academic career. She joined the Journalism Department at The University of Texas at Austin in 1987 and became an affiliate of the Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies. In 1991 she became the second woman and first minority ever to be awarded tenure in the then Department of Journalism. Besides numerous articles and book chapters, she is the principal investigator or director of several grant-funded projects.

She is a 2010 recipient of a Kellogg Foundation three-year grant to collect the voices of long-time residents of East Austin displaced by ongoing intense gentrification of the area. Her teaching, research and publications have tracked this interest in social justice issues such as the exclusion of voice, minority invisibility and housing insecurity for more than 30 years. Her first investigative piece on this topic “40% of Foreclosures Involve Latino Owners” appeared in the L.A. Times on 12/26/1984. It detailed mortgage scams targeting Latinos and other ways to force out minority homeowners.

Her three-year Ford Foundation research grant also explored the curtailing of voice and patterns of newsroom exclusion. This study produced the comprehensive 2003 report released at the National Press Club in Washington D.C.— “Diversity Disconnects: From Classroom to Newsroom.”

Read Dr. de Uriarte’s Full Bio