Profile of Professor Lourdes Argüelles

Lourdes Argüelles is Professor and Researcher of Cultural Studies and Education at Claremont Graduate University.  Lourdes Arguelles was born in Cuba and educated in North America, Europe and the Tibetan settlement of Dharamsala in India.  Lourdes Arguelles received her Ph.D. at New York University from the Center for Human Relations and Community Studies of the School of Education. She did post-doctoral work in law and psychiatry at Osgood Hall Law School at York University in Canada and in ethnic studies at the Chicano Studies Research Center at UCLA. Dr. Arguelles is a licensed marriage, child, and family therapist in the state of California.  Her professional website can be found at: http://www.cgu.edu/pages/386.asp.

Dr. Arguelles is an educator and activist.  She has extensive experience with community, labor, and environmental organizing work in Montreal, New York, Miami, Florida, and in US-Mexico border cities.  In addition, she has spent considerable time involved as a psychotherapist with people living with HIV/AIDS, survivors of political and family torture, and with women of color and sexual minorities.  Dr. Arguelles was Director of Research for the Ministry of Human Resources in British Columbia where she developed and implemented action research techniques for the evaluation of a variety of social and economic programs.

Dr. Arguelles has sat on the boards of many activist, non-profit agencies including One Stop Immigration, one of the largest grassroots immigrant advocacy agencies in the U.S., and of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. She is on the advisory or editorial boards of Sexualities (UK), Multicultural Social Work, Journal of Chicana Studies, and Latino Studies.  

Currently, she is working with Institute of HeartMath, which works to improve to improved emotional stability, cognitive functioning, and academic performance based on new scientific discoveries about the heart.  Dr. Arguelles is Co-principal investigator in this national congressionally funded intervention and research project to improve student achievement.  More information is available at: http://www.heartmath.org/research/research-papers/heart-in-education.html

Until recently, Dr. Arguelles occupied the MacArthur Chair in Women Studies at Pitzer College. She has also taught at the University of British Columbia, the University of New Mexico, Arizona State University, the University of Waterloo (Ontario), UCLA, and Loyola College (Montreal). She has served as a consultant to the American Association of Colleges and Universities, the National Institutes of Health, the Citizenship Branch of the Canadian State Department, Tomas Rivera Institute, and AIDS Project, Los Angeles, among many governmental, private, and non-profit associations. Her work has been published in academic and popular journals around the world, and she has received many awards and citations for her research and humanitarian work, including the Golden Handshake Award from the Boys and Girls Club in Pomona and the 2004 Women of Achievement Award from the YWCA.  She continues to receive many grants from private and public funders for her community-based research projects.

Dr. Arguelles teaches courses and advises students working in immigrant, refugee and community studies, environmental education, the study of genders and sexualities, radical democratic pedagogy, narrative and focus group research, political economy, and eastern and grassroots spiritualities and community informatics.