About Cinthya Martinez

Dr. Cinthya Martinez is currently a UC Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Latin American and Latino Studies Department at UC Santa Cruz. She earned her Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside and a Master’s degree in Chicana and Chicano Studies at California State University, Northridge. She received her B.A. in Ethnic Studies and Political Science at the University of California, San Diego.

Cinthya is a community engaged scholar and an organizer in the migrant justice movement. Previously she organized with the Immigrant Youth Coalition in San Gabriel Valley and was a leader in the Ethnic Studies Now! collective in the city of Azusa.

More recently, she organized with Adelanto Visitation Network to support people in ICE detention and to end migrant detention. Thus, her research draws from her involvement in deportation defense campaigns, a form of critical self-defense and mutual aid, that is based on campaigns in anti-carceral movements. She demonstrates how deportation campaigns and movements to shut down ICE detention centers are a radical act of love, perseverance, and self-defense that migrant communities enact towards imagining a world beyond prisons and borders.

Cinthya is a past recipient of prestigious fellowships such the UC President’s Pre-Professoriate Fellowship as well as the John Randolph Haynes Foundation.

Cinthya’s teaching and research interests are Chicanx/Latinx studies, abolition feminist theory/praxis, and border and immigration studies. Her research and teaching pedagogy are rooted in creating valuable transformative education for diverse communities such as the one she grew up in. She also is determined in creating a pipeline for underrepresented groups entering higher education and empowering youth from all backgrounds to articulate their experiences and challenge them to create the world where they want to live in.

As part of her commitment to her community engagement, she is a member of the Son Jarcho collective at the Eastside Cafe. She also enjoys hiking throughout California.