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CENTER FOR HUMANIZING EDUCATION AND RESEARCH (C-HER)
Steering Committee
Shabnam Koirala-Azad, PhD
Dean of Education
Dean Shabnam Koirala-Azad explores social and educational (in)equities through a transnational lens. Through ethnography and participatory research, her work critically examines the experiences of South Asian students and families in schools and society, as they experience shifting identities and navigate through structural inequities in various geographic, social and political spaces. By examining their realities in both home and host country contexts, she offers new ideas for transnational social action and highlights methodologies that directly address concerns with power and representation. As a mother-scholar, she is also interested in scholarship with an asset-based understanding of how mothering enriches careers in academia.
Danfeng Koon
Associate Professor, Leadership Studies
Faculty Director, C-HER; Co-Chair, C-HER Steering Committee
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Danfeng Soto-Vigil Koon is an Associate Professor in the Leadership Studies department in the School of Education and the Faculty Director of the Center for Humanizing Education and Research. Her research focuses on educational law and policy as a site of political, economic, and cultural contestation and explores the ways that education law and policy further or impede efforts to create a more just society. Her passion and commitment to public education are informed by her work as an educator, lawyer, organizer, and mother.
David Philoxene
Assistant Professor, Teacher Education
Co-Chair, C-HER Steering Committee
David Alexander Philoxène was awarded a PhD in the Graduate School of Education at UC Berkeley in 2021. His research focuses on critical geographies of race and violence, including how Black youth experience, locate, and practice safekeeping. His dissertation employed interviews, youth mapping artifacts, and critical ethnography to examine the sense- and spatial-making practices of Black youth who navigate violence across schooling and neighborhoods in Oakland, California. He is committed to (re)telling stories of resistance, survival, and possibility, and studying Black educational and community-based counter-spaces that exemplify this.
Monisha Bajaj
Professor, International and Multicultural Education
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Monisha Bajaj is Professor and Chair of International and Multicultural Education at the University of San Francisco. Dr. Bajaj is the editor and author of eight books, including, most recently, Humanizing Education for Immigrant and Refugee Youth (Teachers College Press, 2023), as well as numerous articles. She has also developed curriculum—particularly related to peace education, human rights, anti-bullying efforts and sustainability—for non-profit organizations and inter-governmental organizations, such as UNICEF and UNESCO. She is the recipient of the Ella Baker/Septima Clark Human Rights Award (2015) from Division B of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Her debut picture book is entitled A Year of Kites (2026).
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Seenae Chong
Assistant Professor
Daniela Dominguez
Associate Professor, Counseling Psychology
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Dr. Daniela Domínguez is an associate professor in the counseling psychology department, where she coordinates the Marriage and Family Therapy program at the Santa Rosa Location. She is a licensed psychologist and professional clinical counselor with a special interest in liberation psychology, anti-racism, migrant justice, and gender and sexuality matters.
Emma Fuentes
Professor, International and Multicultural Education
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Emma Fuentes, Professor in the International and Multicultural Education Department at the University of San Francisco. Her research encompasses the areas of critical social theory, racial justice and education, and movement building praxes. As a scholar, she is deeply committed to humanizing praxes grounded in solidarity and justice. Her work investigates the ways that communities marginalized based on race, class, language, or immigration status organize themselves and engage in active citizenship. Overall her scholarship has two key objectives: 1) to conduct research that is local and collaborative and leads to socially just education, and 2) to expand theoretical and conceptual lenses in the areas of critical social theory and racial justice in education.
Belinda Hernandez-Arriaga
Assistant Professor
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Belinda Hernandez Arriaga is a Faculty Coordinator for the Masters In Counseling MFT program at USF's South Bay location. Belinda has a doctorate in Education, and is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with eighteen years experience working in community mental health, with a specialization in child trauma and Latino Mental Health. Belinda has extensive experience in county mental health where she worked in Santa Clara County Juvenile Hall mental health and San Mateo County Pre to Three High Risk Infant Mental health team. She also spent a significant time working at University of California Berkeley, Tang Social Services team where her focus was working with student families.
Farima Pour-Khorshid
Assistant Professor
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Farima Pour-Khorshid is a first-generation Ph.D. and Associate Professor at the University of San Francisco. Her work has been locally, nationally, and internationally situated in her roles as a K-12 teacher, professor, teacher supervisor, educational consultant, public intellectual, scholar, and educator-organizer. She has learned from and served within multiple local and national education organizations and is one of the editors, authors, and organizers of, "Lessons in Liberation: An Abolitionist Toolkit for Educators", a collaboration between various grassroots abolitionist and justice-centered collectives. She’s published several peer-reviewed academic articles and book chapters, delivered over 150 invited keynote addresses, professional presentations, and guest lectures, and contributed to a range of public platforms such as TEDx Talk and National Public Radio (NPR). As such, she received the 40 Under 40 Leadership Award from California State University, East Bay, for her humanizing, healing centered, and abolitionist approaches within and outside the field of education.