The University Libraries are pleased to welcome Dr. Ruthie Meadows and Dr. Mauricio de Miranda Parrondo as the 2025-2026 Roberto C. Goizueta Distinguished Presidential Fellows for the Cuban Heritage Collection. During their fellowships, Dr. Meadows and Dr. de Miranda Parrondo will advance research for book projects using the extensive resources in the Collection. As part of their duties, both fellows will engage with the University of Miami and wider South Florida communities and will deliver a public lecture toward the end of their residencies.
Dr. Ruthie Meadows, the fall 2025 awardee, is an associate professor of ethnomusicology in the School of Music at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her research focuses on the global circulations of music and sound in the Hispanophone and circum-Caribbean regions, with an emphasis on sexuality studies, gender studies, ritual music, jazz, and ecology. She has received the Society for Ethnomusicology's Jaap Kunst Prize for her article on women and batá percussion in Cuba and has published her first book, “Efficacy of Sound: Power, Potency, and Promise in the Translocal Ritual Music of Cuban Ifá-Òrìṣà.” She holds a bachelor’s degree in Latin American studies and Spanish from Tulane University in Louisiana, and she earned a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Meadows’ project, “Experimentalisms in Motion: Cuban Women in Jazz and Fusion (Fusión),” is a book-length study on Cuban women in jazz and jazz fusion today and throughout the 20th century. As a music scholar with research experience in Cuba and the Cuban diaspora, she presented plans for research at the Cuban Heritage Collection and public engagement in partnership with the University’s Frost School of Music. Her work to recover the history of women’s involvement in Cuban jazz aligns with the Collection’s priority to highlight, and increase holdings related to, underrepresented stories of the Cuban experience.
Dr. Mauricio de Miranda Parrondo, the spring 2026 awardee, is a Cuban-born professor in the Department of Economics at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Cali, Colombia, and is one of the leading experts on the Cuban economy. A naturalized Colombian and Spanish citizen, he has been teaching at the Universidad Javeriana for over 30 years. He served as chair of the Department of Economics on two occasions (1995-2002 and 2006-2012) and directed the Center for the Study of the Pacific Basin from 2015 to 2020. He currently serves as co-director of CubaxCuba: Laboratorio de Pensamiento Cívico, a non-profit organization that publishes analysis of Cuba's major socioeconomic and political challenges. He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Havana in Cuba, and he earned a Ph.D. in international economics and development from Complutense University of Madrid in Spain.
Dr. de Miranda Parrondo’s research interests span international political economy, economic history and policy, and cultural studies, particularly opera, ballet, cinema, theater, literature, and visual arts. His project, “Cuba: inserción internacional y subdesarrollo,” is a book-length study of the evolution of the Cuban economy in the 20th century. A proposed lecture on Cuba’s current economic crisis will bring positive publicity to the Collection and to Cuban studies at the University.
At the conclusion of Dr. Meadows’ and Dr. de Miranda Parrondo’s service as Goizueta distinguished presidential fellows, they will both return to their roles in teaching and research at the University of Nevada, Reno, and the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana de Cali, respectively.
The University Libraries are excited about the combination of themes, disciplines, as well as the national and international scholarship this pairing represents, and remain exceedingly grateful to The Goizueta Foundation for making this innovative program possible. Please join us in congratulating these two exceptional scholars in the Cuban studies field.
Dr. Ruthie Meadows can be reached at rmeadows@unr.edu. Dr. Mauricio de Miranda Parrondo can be reached at mdmirand@javerianacali.edu.co.
