Ximena López Carrillo

Professor Ximena López Carrillo serves as a Lecturer in Latinx Studies within Yale University's Program in Ethnicity, Race & Migration. Her academic work bridges historical, medical, and sociopolitical perspectives to examine critical issues affecting Latinx communities in the United States.

Her research interests focus on the historical intersections of medicine and mental health within Latinx communities, particularly examining how race has been constructed in the United States. She investigates migration patterns and the politics surrounding health and disease, with particular attention to how these factors shape community experiences and identities. Her work critically analyzes the historical relationship between medical institutions and marginalized populations.

López Carrillo's current scholarly project examines the emergence of Latinx mental health activism during the 1960s and 1970s, which sought to challenge and correct pseudoscientific theories that inappropriately associated Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans with mental illness and criminality. Through tracing intellectual debates among psychiatrists and psychologists across Texas, California, and New York, her research illuminates how mental health discourses have contributed to the construction of Latinx identity and fostered inter-ethnic alliances between Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans.

As part of Yale's Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration (RITM) initiative, Professor López Carrillo contributes to interdisciplinary scholarship that examines the complex dynamics of race, ethnicity, and migration through historical and contemporary lenses.