Research Team
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Mario A. Murillo
Mario Alfonso Murillo is Professor of Communication and Latin American Studies at Hofstra University, and is currently the Vice Dean of the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication, where he also co-chairs the school’s DEI Committee. He teaches a variety of courses, both graduate and undergraduate, in radio journalism and production, media studies, and Latin American studies. Among the many roles he plays at Hofstra, he is an active member of the Advisory Boards of both the Center for Civic Engagement, where he formerly served as its co-director, and the Center for “Race,” Culture and Social Justice. Through these centers, he has worked on a variety of campus-wide and community-based projects in collaboration with local, grassroots organizations.
In his many years working in the radio industry, he has served as Program Director, Director of Public Affairs programming, and a host and producer at WBAI Pacifica Radio in New York, was a feature correspondent for NPR’s Latino USA, served as a regular guest host on WNYC New York Public Radio, and reported for 1010 WINS Radio in New York. He also serves as a faculty advisor and producer at WRHU 88.7FM, Hofstra University’s award-winning, student-run, community-licensed radio station.
As a journalist, writer and researcher, he has focused much of his attention on the cultural and social role public interest, community-oriented media play in local and national contexts, and considers these grassroots media to be a fundamental tool of cultural affirmation, artistic expression, civic participation, and political mobilization. In 2008-2009, he was a Fulbright Scholar in Colombia, where, along with teaching at the Universidad Pontificia la Javeriana in Bogotá, he worked alongside members of the Indigenous Council of Northern Cauca on collaborative research related to its various community radio stations and other communication projects. He is the author of Colombia and the United States: War, Unrest and Destabilization (Seven Stories, 2004), and Islands of Resistance: Puerto Rico, Vieques and U.S. Policy (Seven Stories, 2001), and has written and reported extensively about Latin America for a number of publications and academic journals.
Of Puerto Rican and Colombian descent, he was born and currently lives in New York City.
Aashish Kumar
Prof. Aashish Kumar (he/him) is a tenured Full Professor of Television and Immersive Media in the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. His areas of expertise include documentary, interactive and immersive media, participatory media, and storytelling for social change. He is also the founding program director of the Interdisciplinary Minor in Immersive Media, an innovative program launched in conjunction with departments from the Schools of Communication, Engineering and Computer Science, and Humanities, Fine, and Performing Arts. Along with Professors Mario Murillo and Scott Brinton, Aashish is a contributor to an ongoing study of how news and community media are distributed, consumed, and produced in black and brown communities surrounding Hofstra University.
Aashish is interested in emerging media forms that use innovative storytelling strategies to help people become more aware of internal diversities and the margins of their communities. To him, such an empathic understanding is key to forming broader solidarities and bridging the gap with “the other.” He is interested in how one’s process of capturing, representing, and distributing these stories can become integral to the overall intention of the storyteller. Aashish most recently launched an interactive documentary series focusing on the gender and sexual diversity within the South Asian diaspora in North America. Titled “Body, Home, World: South Asian LGBTQ+ Journeys,” the interactive online portal centers narratives of LGBTQ+ identifying individuals and their families, allowing the viewer to navigate between these multiple viewpoints and to gain an understanding of the uniqueness as well as the interdependence of each experience.
He is the recipient of two Fulbright Senior Scholar award (2022 and 2008) and two Fulbright Specialist awards (2016 and 2019). In addition to teaching courses at all levels of the television curriculum Aashish also serves on the Advisory Board of Hofstra University’s Center for Civic Engagement and the Center for “Race,” Culture and Social Justice.
Aashish earned an MFA in Television Production from the City University of New York, Brooklyn College, an M.S. in Radio/TV/Film from Indiana State University, and an M.A. and B.A. (Honors) in Sociology from the University of Delhi. He resides in New York City with his wife and son and enjoys playing the guitar and learning Hindustani Classical music.
Scott A. Brinton
Scott Brinton was a Hofstra University adjunct professor of journalism for 12 years before joining the Pride faculty full-time in 2022. Since 2015, he has co-directed the university’s Summer High School Journalism Institute, which recruits students from nearby communities of color to study journalism at the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication, and he edits and advises the award-winning Long Island Advocate, LHSC’s online multimedia publication that covers the communities surrounding Hofstra.
Outside of Hofstra, he was most recently executive editor of Herald Community Newspapers, one of New York’s largest community media groups. In his 28 years at the Herald, Brinton published more than 4,000 articles and completed 25 major investigations. Among them was a 44-part, 60,000-word exposé, from 2001-2005, that led to closure of Freeport Electric’s Power Plant No. 2, a diesel plant with no pollution controls that threatened the local environment and nearby residents’ health.
Brinton’s work has also appeared in or on Newsday, The New York Times, WABC “Eyewitness News,” CBS News, MSNBC, the Oprah Winfrey Network, Long Beach Magazine, The Riverdale Press, Jewish Star, Nickelodeon and Google’s Year in Search 2020, in addition to a Google public service announcement, an AT&T national advertising campaign and the 2020 Democratic National Convention.
As well, he served in the U.S. Peace Corps in Bulgaria from 1991-93.
