In her 10 years as the director of the University of Miami Institute for Advanced Study of the Americas (UMIA), Felicia Marie Knaul spearheaded research on critical topics such as access to palliative care and pain relief, gender-based violence, and government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, among other issues impacting the Americas. Under her leadership, the institute also supported dozens of distinguished graduate fellows, providing doctoral students with crucial resources and guidance.
“As the director of UMIA, Felicia created a university-wide community of more than 300 faculty dedicated to teaching and scholarship on Latin America and the Caribbean,” said Sallie Hughes, chair of the Department of Journalism and Media Management at the School of Communication, who previously served as UMIA’s senior research lead and faculty director. “Her unwavering dedication to advancing public health and social equity has profoundly impacted the University of Miami and the lives of women around the world.”
UMIA was established in the College of Arts and Sciences in 2015 to serve as the university-wide hub for scholarship, policy dialogue, and interdisciplinary collaboration on contemporary issues in the Americas.
Knaul, an acclaimed health economist who served as UMIA’s director from the fall of 2015 to early 2025, built on the work of two previous centers—the Center for Hemispheric Policy and the Center for Latin American Studies—in shaping UMIA. She recently left the University for UCLA, where she now serves as a distinguished professor of medicine and senior advisor to the dean of UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, as well as a senior advisor to the president of UCLA Health. She also serves as the associate of UCLA’s chancellor, Julio Frenk, her partner and the former president of the University of Miami.
“Felicia really helped to springboard a lot of different research agendas into published reality,” said Michael Touchton, an associate professor of political science who served as UMIA’s faculty lead for global health and deputy director for research.
Knaul’s support for research endeavors extended to fundraising, including facilitating connections between researchers and potential donors. “That allowed the institute to perform, especially on a research dimension, well above its budgeted level and to also create a platform for long-term research excellence among the faculty that were involved,” Touchton said.
Many faculty members benefited from UMIA’s robust support for research, including Alejandro Portes, a sociologist whose recent book “Urbanization and Migration in Three Continents” came out of a 2023 UMIA conference on the same topic.
“Felicia was an inspirational leader who strove to give greater visibility to UMIA in the Americas and in the world and under whose leadership many important scholarly events took place,” said Portes, a professor of law and distinguished scholar of Arts and Sciences who previously served as the chair of UMIA’s faculty advisory committee, as well as a member of its external advisory committee. Portes also led the University’s Presidential Initiative on Migration and Global Change, which was housed at UMIA.
Among students and faculty, Knaul was known as a dedicated mentor. During her tenure, UMIA supported more than 30 distinguished graduate fellows and provided nearly 80 field research grants to graduate students.
“She was a really good mentor for junior faculty members as well as distinguished fellows,” said Lillian Manzor, the interim director of UMIA and a professor in the Michele Bowman Underwood Department of Modern Languages and Literatures who previously served as UMIA’s faculty lead for Latin American and Caribbean research. “She took mentoring very seriously.”
Manzor added that Knaul’s work at UMIA shined a much-needed spotlight on health disparities in the Americas. “She was very important in creating research networks around global health, palliative care, and health inequalities globally, but especially in the Americas,” Manzor said. This included the 2018 global launch of the Lancet Commission on Global Access to Palliative Care and Pain Relief, which brought leading policymakers, scholars, and advocates to the University.
Felicia Casanova, a research assistant professor in the School of Nursing and Health Studies, was one of Knaul’s mentees while she was a Ph.D. student and distinguished fellow at UMIA. “Collaborating with Dr. Knaul led to co-authored publications and ongoing projects, and helped shape the global-local lens I continue to use in my research today,” she said. “Her mentorship and visionary leadership have been inspiring in my growth as a scholar committed to health equity.”
Knaul said she is committed to maintaining her professional ties with professors and students at the University. “I was blessed to have made enduring academic bonds with many colleagues at the U, and I look very much forward to seeing our existing collaborative research to fruition and to embarking on future work,” she said.
