ABOUT
Kristopher Oliveira, Ph.D. (he/him/his) currently serves as the Director of the LGBTQ+ Equity Center at the University of Maryland, College Park. His research and teaching interests are education, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, qualitative research methods, institutional ethnography, and mixed/multi-methodologies. Kris' research has focused on the emancipatory potential of LGBTQ+ (QT) Resource Centers at colleges and universities, and the experiences of Black and Queer higher education professionals.
Kristopher has extensive experience working as a diversity, equity, and inclusion leader in higher education and student affairs. He has served as an QT Center Director where he delivered a variety of presentations on queer identity, influenced policy and advocacy on campus, developed events and programs, and advanced a departmental agenda to support queer and trans students at the intersections of identity. Kris imagines a higher education landscape where strategies for resisting local and global oppression are commonplace. His other experiences in student affairs include working in orientation programming, advising and student transitions, and financial aid.
Kristopher recently wrapped up his dissertation research entitled Revisiting ‘Our’ Place on Campus: A Queer(ed) and In-Depth Interview Study of QT Resource Professionals in Higher Education which was a national in-depth interview study with 41 QT resource professionals in higher education. Framed by Muñoz's (2009) notion of queer futurity, his research interrogates the experiences of QT resource professionals to make sense of the structural and interactional liminality experienced by QT resource professionals in higher education. Kristopher also worked with Dr. Will Tyson (PI) on PathTech LISTEN: Mixed Methods Longitudinal Investigations of Students in Technician EducatioN (NSF: 1801163).
His latest publication is a book chapter in a forthcoming (November 2022) edited volume entitled Navigating Three QT Resource Centers: Identifying and Dismantling Discursive Logics of Oppression, in “Narrating the Insider/Outsider Paradox as LGBTQ+ Educators in Higher Education and Student Affairs,” edited by A. Duran, T.J. Jourian, R. Miller, and J. Cisneros.
Kris was formerly an active volunteer with the Trevor Project and the Human Rights Campaign. On July 8, 2022 he earned a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of South Florida. He received a B.S. in Psychology (certificates in Gender Studies and Music) from Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania, and a M.S. in Higher Education Administration from St. Cloud State University. His Master’s thesis was a survey study entitled The Effect of LGBT Resource Centers on Student Success and Engagement.