Dr. Yolanda Chávez Leyva, Professor of History

Dr. Yolanda Chávez Leyva is a historian and writer who was born and raised on the US-Mexico border. She is the Director of the Institute of Oral History and Professor in the Department of History at the University of Texas at El Paso. She is Co-PI of a Mellon funded project to document shade inequity in El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. She is also PI of the Mellon-funded Humanities Collaborative. Professor Leyva specializes in border history, public history, and Mexican American history. She served as the lead historian for the first-ever Bracero Museum (funded by the Mellon Foundation) slated to open in Socorro, Texas. She is the recipient of the National Council on Public History "Best Public History Project Award" and the American Historical Association Herbert Feis Award that recognizes "distinguished contributions to public history." She has also received several faculty awards from UTEP and the College of Liberal Arts.