Carla Villanueva

This profile was current as of 2020, when she was part of the on-campus Kellogg community.

Carla Irina Villanueva holds a B.A. from the University of California, Riverside in Ethnic Studies and Sociology. She received an M.A. in Latin American Studies from California State University, Los Angeles. Her master’s thesis was an oral history project with a student activist who joined an urban-armed movement and who became a political prisoner in Mexico during the 1970s.

As a doctoral candidate in the department of History at Notre Dame, Carla’s research interests include the Cold War in Latin America, political activism during the sixties, and 20^th-century Mexican history; currently working on her dissertation, "Normalistas rurales and the politics of education in peripheral Mexico during the Global Sixties."

In addition to her academic work, Carla has done extensive community organizing. During her time in Los Angeles she helped coordinate and facilitate delegations to Chiapas, Mexico, primarily for low-income people of color in the United States. The delegations included intensive workshops and visit to Zapatista areas, and promoted transnational activism and autonomous community building. She also worked as a union organizer in California for more than five years. 

Carla presents her research at Kellogg's Research Spotlight - Thursday, September 19, 2019