Buenos Aires
Program Staff
Faculty-in-Residence
2026-2027
Ame Cividanes
Professor of Hispanic Studies
International Studies and Languages Division
Dr. Ame Cividanes, Professor of Teaching of Hispanic Studies, received her Ph.D. in Contemporary Spanish Literature from Florida State University, with a secondary specialization in Curriculum Development and Second Language Acquisition. She previously taught Spanish at Pepperdine from 1997 to 2000 and directed the Buenos Aires summer program in 1999.
Dr. Cividanes brings a wealth of experience in language education, having served as Director of the Spanish and Portuguese Language Program at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. She has taught all levels of Spanish language, literature, and culture, and held prior appointments at the University of Miami, where she was Intensive Language Program Coordinator, and at Florida Atlantic University.
Dr. Cividanes has over 20 years of experience leading intensive language and culture programs in Latin America and Spain. At Yale, she served as both faculty and director for the university’s programs in Bilbao, Spain, and Quito, Ecuador. In Spring 2025, Dr. Cividanes served as Faculty in Residence for Pepperdine’s International Programs in Switzerland, and this summer, she is directing Pepperdine’s Upper Division Program in Madrid. She has a deep love for Argentina and can’t wait to work with our students there in the near future.
Her lifelong commitment to fostering intercultural understanding at the university level remains a personal and professional passion. She is also deeply committed to Pepperdine’s Christian mission, and views her work—both in and outside the classroom—as a way to serve and guide students in their academic, personal, and spiritual growth.
Fall 2027
John Ned
Visiting Assistant Professor of Finance
Business Administration, Seaver College
Spring 2028
Laura Estes
Assistant Professor of Religion
Professor Estes studies religion in late antiquity with a particular focus on the literature of Syriac-speaking Christian communities. She is especially interested in how early Christians interpreted the Bible, an interest that has led to her inclusion as an annotator for Oxford University Press's Ancient Christian Study Bible for the books of Genesis and Jude. Her current book project, tentatively titled Naming Hagar's Children: Late Antique Christian Portrayals of Early Islam, explores identity formation and literary representation of Muslims in Christians narratives from the 7th-9th centuries CE. It considers how Christian authors transformed existing literary traditions, especially biblical exegesis and polemic, to name and portray Muslims as "Jews," "pagans," and "heretics."