Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) at UConn is a vibrant hub for research, scholarship, and outreach among scholars, students, and Indigenous community members. Our mission is to become a center for renewed presence of Indigenous peoples in Connecticut, New England, and the entire Eastern region of the United States.
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NAISI Staff
Chris Newell: Instructor-in-Residence at the Native American Cultural Programs, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Chris Newell is founding director of the Native American Cultural Program for the University of Connecticut and co-founder/director of education for Akomawt Educational Initiative; a majority Native-ownded educational consultancy based in Connecticut. He is a multi-award winning museum professional born and raised in Motahkmikuhk (Indian Township, ME) and a proud citizen of the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Indian Township. He also serves on the Board of Trustees for the New England Museum Association, Tides Institute, Maine Public, Indigo Arts Alliance, and the New England Foundation for the Arts.
Chris is a long-time singer with the acclaimed Mystic River singers based out of Connecticut and has travelled the US and Canada singing and participating in cultural celebrations, pow wows, and live stage performance. Chris was the Senior Advisor for the Emmy-award winning documentary Dawland and participant and and co-director of the short documentary Weckuwapok: The Approaching Dawn (2022) chronicling a historic sunrise concert in 2021 with Wabanaki musicians/storytellers and 19-time Grammy-winning cellist Yo-Yo-Ma and again in 2025 with a two city collaboration called We Are Water. In addition, Chris is a published author of the Scholastic book If You Lived During the Plimoth Thanksgiving, a non-fiction historical children's picture book focusing on the history of encounters with Wampanoag peoples and early English colonists which earned starred reviews from the School Library Journal and Kirk's Reviews.
As an Instructor-in-Residence at UConn, Chris also teaches Intro to NAIS (WGSS 3998) every spring while also taking care of the duties of director of the Native American Cultural Program. Chris is an educator at heart and his dream is a world that is better educated and better prepared to take on the challenges in Indian Country.
For more information, please visit this link: Chris Newell
Professor of Political Science and Director of Native American and Indigenous Studies
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Assistant Professor in the Department of Geology, Sustainability, Community and Urban Studies and Social and Critical Inquiry
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Assistant Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Assistant Professor of History
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Bruno Seraphin – Assistant Professor of Anthropology, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
I am an assistant professor in the departments of Anthropology and Social and Critical Inquiry, and core faculty in Native American and Indigenous Studies as UConn. I am a settler born an raised on Nipmuc territory in eastern Massachusetts. My research and teaching focus on environmental and climate justice, Indigenous sovereignty, and film/visual culture. My courses at UConn include ANTH 1001W: Anthropology Through Film, ANTH 1010E: Global Climate Change and Human Societies, and NAIS 2100: Climate Colonialism and Indigenous Resistance. I also teach ANTH graduate seminars on Community Engaged Research, Settler Colonialism, and Contemporary Social Theory.
I am the director of the Multimedia Anthropology Lab (MAL) at UConn. MAL is a resource hub for community engaged and ethnographic work across modalities such as video, photography, graphic design, and sound. Lab facilities are available to anthropology majors, graduate students, and faculty, as well as the broader UConn community. The lab is outfitted with an array of video and audio production equipment, a four-person podcasting kit, and a post-production/editing suite.
My research focuses on Indigenous fire management in California. I have engaged in community-collaborative scholarship and filmmaking with the Karuk Tribe of Northern California since 2018. Our work includes ongoing oral history research toward an anti-colonial account of wildfire management in Northern California, the production of data sovereignty protocols for the Karin Tribe, a series of short films on fire stewardship, and a book-in-progress entitled Into Fire: Indigenous Management and the Politics of Environmental Crises.
I make films in collaboration with Karuk fire practitioners, for example this film on Indigenous women's burning as well as this film on strategic wildfire response. I write about ecofascism, for example this comic/webzine. You can learn more at website.
For more information, please visit this link: Bruno Seraphin
Assistant Professor of English
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences