Gabriela Garcia is the Director of Graduate Initiatives and Innovation in the School of Humanities and Associate Director of the Humanities Research Center (HRC) at Rice University.

As Director of Graduate Initiatives and Innovation, Dr. Garcia works closely with the School of Humanities’ leadership and faculty, as well as with national, peer, and local partners to reimagine graduate education in the humanities at Rice and beyond. In this capacity, she advances innovative training for graduate students, oversees the Public Humanities Graduate Internship Program, and designs curricula that support holistic humanistic education, including engaging students with critical university studies and preparing them for diverse career paths.

As Associate Director of the HRC, Dr. Garcia works with the Director and Faculty Council to facilitate interdisciplinary humanities research, advance innovative postdoctoral programs, and drive public engagement with the liberal arts. Her work bridges the HRC’s history of research excellence with an expanding network of partners that create local impact and foster global dialogue, raising the School’s visibility and influence in key areas of humanistic inquiry.

In her research, Dr. Garcia examines how cross-cultural interactions shape our understanding of productivity, human-nature relationships, and environmental sustainability. Her current book project, The Dialectic of Comodismo: Brazil in the Mid-Twentieth-Century Western Cultural Imaginary, analyzes the figure of the acomodado—a Brazilian social type often characterized as lethargic—to reveal how alternative modes of relationality might offer resources for addressing our current environmental crisis.

Dr. Garcia brings extensive experience in academic programming, institution building, and public engagement, having organized over 60 conferences and symposia across the U.S. and Europe. Before joining Rice, she helped launch the Tulane Global Humanities Research Center and produced the Anti-Racism and the Disciplines podcast. She also served as Research Associate and Director of Communications for the Center for Transcultural Studies and held multiple roles at various centers and institutes at Northwestern University.

Dr. Garcia holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from Northwestern University, where she received the Best Graduate Dissertation Award, and completed graduate certificates in Critical Theory and Latin American and Caribbean Studies.