Bernadette Pérez

Bernadette Pérez serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in U.S. histories of Latinx and Indigenous peoples in the American West through intersecting lenses of race, environment, labor, migration, and colonialism.

Education

• Ph.D., University of Minnesota, U.S. History
• M.A., University of California, Berkeley, Latin American Studies
• B.A., University of Colorado, Boulder, International Affairs, summa cum laude

Research Focus: Her scholarship critically examines empire and racial capitalism, with current work tracing corporate sugar operations in southeastern Colorado and their century-long impact on Indigenous, Mexican, Asian, and white working communities. This research reveals how land control and transformation shaped U.S. state evolution amid Indian removal and anti-Blackness.

Scientific Recognition

• W. Turrentine Jackson Dissertation Award, Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association (2018)
• Outstanding Dissertation Award, Immigration and Ethnic History Society (2018)
• Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellowship in Race and Ethnicity Studies, Princeton Society of Fellows (2017-2020)
• Mellon Foundation Fellowship
• Council on Library and Information Resources Fellowship
• Organization of American Historians Fellowship
• Western History Association Fellowship

Research Support: Pérez has secured major funding through prestigious fellowships including the Mellon Foundation and Council on Library and Information Resources awards, which enabled her postdoctoral research at Princeton and current manuscript development on migrant labor and racial capitalism in the American West.