Dana Velasco Murillo

Dana Velasco Murillo is a Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. Her research focuses on the social and ethnohistorical dimensions of early modern Latin America, particularly the experiences of indigenous groups and women in colonial Mexico's northern silver mining regions. She is currently working on her second book project, *The Chichimeca Arc: War, Peace, and Resettlement in America’s First Borderlands, 1546-1616*, which examines nomadic indigenous societies' role in shaping New Spain's empire. Prior to UCSD, she served as an Assistant Professor at Adelphi University and held a UC Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship at UC Irvine.

Her research interests include colonial borderlands dynamics, indigenous agency, gender studies, and the intersection of labor and resource extraction. She has held prestigious fellowships such as the National Endowment for the Humanities (2025-2026) and the ACLS Burkhardt Fellowship (2020-2021). Her work bridges academic scholarship with public-facing initiatives, including contributions to *Routledge Resources Online* and *ICHAN TECOLOTL*.

Murillo teaches courses on colonial Latin America, race/class/gender dynamics, and early California history. Her pedagogical focus includes graduate seminars on historiographic methods and the analysis of primary sources. She has co-edited volumes like *Overlooked Places and Peoples* (Routledge, 2024), expanding discussions on marginalized groups in the Spanish Empire.