Elizabeth Oglesby

I am a critical human geographer with a broad inter-disciplinary appreciation. My academic work has focused on state violence, forced displacement, political economy, human rights, and memory, particularly in Central America. I am co-editor of The Guatemala Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Duke University Press, 2011) and Guatemala: The Question of Genocide (Routledge, 2018), as well as numerous articles and book chapters. Recently, I have been writing on Central American migration and U.S. border policy in venues such as The Nation, The Hill, The Conversation, Salon, Truthout and others directed at a U.S. public audience.

I believe strongly in collaborative scholarship. My professional experience in Latin American issues includes working as editor of Central America Report in Guatemala City, as Associate Editor of NACLA Report on the Americas, and as a researcher with the Guatemalan Truth Commission following Guatemala's peace accords (1997-1999). In 2013 and 2918, I testified as an expert witness in the genocide trials against retired general José Efraín Ríos Montt in Guatemala City.

I teach classes in Latin American and global human rights, international development, borders, refugees, and migration, and research methods, at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and social theory at the graduate level. I advise students researching a range of issues across the hemisphere and beyond. I also coordinate the University of Arizona Guatemala study abroad program in collaboration wiith colleagues from the Association for the Advancement of the Social Sciences in Guatemala City.

I am the recipient of the Gilbert White Public Service Honors from the American Association of Geographers, as well as an Outstanding Mentor Award from the University of Arizona’s Honors College, and an Outstanding Upper Division Teaching Award from the UArizona College of Social and Behavioral Sciences.