Ignacio Martinez

Dr. Ignacio Martinez is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), affiliated with the Department of History within the College of Liberal Arts. He holds a B.A. and M.A. from the University of New Mexico and a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona.

His research focuses on Colonial Latin America, the Hispanic World, and the intellectual history of Latin America, with particular emphasis on the Spanish Borderlands. He authored The Intimate Frontier: Friendship and Civil Society in Northern New Spain (2019), which examines the role of friendship in shaping frontier societies. His current project explores the evolution from Creole Patriotism to Chicano Nationalism.

Dr. Martinez has directed multiple National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institutes (2017, 2019, 2021, 2023), including the 2023 institute on borderlands narratives. He teaches courses such as World History to 1500, Religion in Colonial Latin America, and graduate seminars on ethnohistory and colonial Latin America.

He collaborates with UTEP's Center for History Teaching and Learning, Institute of Oral History, and the Borderlands Digital Humanities Center, advancing pedagogical and research initiatives in borderlands studies.