Daniela Johannes

Daniela Johannes is Associate Professor of Languages and Director of Latin American and Latinx Studies at West Chester University of Pennsylvania within the College of Arts and Humanities. Her research centers on U.S.-Mexico border dynamics through Latinx and Border Studies frameworks, with emphasis on the Sonoran Desert as a geopolitical and ecological space.

Education:

• Ph.D. and M.A. in Spanish and Border Studies, University of Arizona
• B.A. in Humanities, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

Her scholarship applies philosophical new materialisms to examine "border affect"—the interplay of human actions, security apparatuses, and non-human agency in border securitization. She investigates how the Sonoran Desert environment becomes instrumentalized in state violence while advocating for Latinx-centered narratives that reclaim agency in border discourse.

Current research trends focus on necropolitics, nature-sovereignty relationships, and artistic resistance at the border, exemplified by her publication on border architectures. Future work expands into language politics through collaborations with filmmaker Dr. Iliana Pagán on migrant children's linguistic experiences.

Dr. Johannes co-directs West Chester's Latino Communities Conference and serves on the Ethnic Studies Institute Executive Committee. Her international collaborations include faculty exchange initiatives with Saarland University developed during her 2021 UniGR-CBS research residency, where she presented on desert politics and border necropolitics.

She actively builds transnational academic networks through the "Border Languaging" initiative and plans joint programming across U.S.-European institutions to address border issues through interdisciplinary lenses.