People

Alexis Mootoo

Assistant Vice President, Resource Management & Development - Student Success
Adjunct Instructor

Contact

Office: BEH 231
Email: amootoo@usf.edu

Bio

Dr. Alexis Nicole Mootoo obtained a Ph.D. in Government and a Graduate Certificate in Latin American Studies from USF’s School of Interdisciplinary and Global Studies under the direction of Professor Bernd Reiter. Currently, Dr. Mootoo serves as an Assistant Vice President at the University of South Florida and adjuncts for USF’s School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies and Humanities.

Dr. Mootoo is interested in American and International Race Politics and Race Relations, Comparative Politics, and Public and Foreign Policy. Her research areas of interest are Brazil and regions with Afro-Descendant populations. Her dissertation “Structural Racism: Racists without Racism in Liberal Institutions within Colorblind States” examined how Afro-Descendants are competing in publicly funded universities in New York City and the City of São Paulo, taking race based affirmative action into consideration.

Part of her academic career includes being a McKnight Fellow and receiving a number of grants to complete her international and domestic dissertation research. Universidade Paulista International Business School, São Paulo, invited Dr. Mootoo as a fellow in their "Strategy and Marketing for Emerging Countries” program in 2015. In Summer 2017, Dr. Mootoo was invited and participated in the University of Columbia’s Summer Teacher and Scholar Institute. Dr. Mootoo has presented in a number of domestic and international conferences such as the Third Conference on Ethnicity, Race, and Indigenous Peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean, Oaxaca, Mexico, presentation title “Exclusion of Afro-Latins from the Public Sphere and Popular Discourse,” and the Latin America Studies Association Congress, Chicago, Illinois, presentation title “21st Century Apartheid: The Unintended Consequences of Human Rights Legislation and Development in Black Latin America.”

In November 2018, Dr. Mootoo was invited by the University of Northern British Columbia to be a featured speaker for the President's Speaker Series.  She delivered her presentation titled, "The Tensions of Race in Liberal Spaces: What is Happening?"