José Eduardo Valdivia Heredia

José Eduardo Valdivia Heredia (they/elle/ellx) is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. They are a Chicanx artist and scholar from Sonoma, California. José received an M.A. in Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley (2025) and a B.A. in Religion and Latin American/Latino Studies from Swarthmore College (2023)

At UC Berkeley, José’s research broadly examines cultural productions and performance in the Black Atlantic, centering on questions of health, history, and spirituality. Their dissertation project examines how Black women cultural workers (artists, healers, musicians, and writers) use life writing and personal narrative forms to articulate their experiences of disability, illness, and impairment through spiritual frameworks that exceed dominant medical and social discourses around health in the United States.

 José is also concurrently working on two other projects. One examines questions of anti-Black violence, captivity, and redress in contemporary Black Caribbean performance art. The other project explores the imbrication of empire, (homo)nationalism, and neoliberalism in post-NAFTA Mexico-US relations through the lens of drag reality competitions like RuPaul's Drag Race and La Más Draga. 

They are also a graduate mentor at the CICI Discovery Hub Fellowship (2025-26), leading a team of undergraduate researchers who are assisting on their dissertation research.