Lyman Recipient: Sophia Perez

BCNM is excited to announce Sophia Perez (Ph.D. candidate in Geography) as the 2026 Peter Lyman Fellow!

This summer, Sophia Perez will be working on a dissertation chapter focused on the production and content of Island Time, a Mariana Islands-based children’s show she created and directed as a way to tailor the celebration of the Indigenous Chamorro culture and language to the needs and aesthetics of today’s Chamorro youth. The film can be viewed here. Her intention is to examine this creative product and process as a case study within the context of existing new media scholarship around Indigenous new media production, noting where Island Time aligns with and contradicts that scholarship. In order to situate Island Time as an Indigenous new media project, she will also briefly unpack its context within modern-day Chamorro culture, which is itself situated within a larger colonial context. She plans to argue that Island Time resists prevailing colonial perspectives which devalue and negate Indigenous culture, instead weaving a timeless Indigenous heritage into new technological contexts.

The Peter Lyman Graduate Fellowship in new media, established in the memory of esteemed UC Berkeley Professor Peter Lyman, provides a stipend to a UC Berkeley Ph.D. candidate to support the writing of his or her Ph.D. dissertation on a topic related to new media. The fellowship is supported by donations from Professor Barrie Thorne, Sage Publications and many individual friends and faculty.

Read more about the fellowship program here.