Isabel Martinez

Dr. Martinez is an Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American and Latinx Studies.  Trained in Sociology and Education, her research focuses on unaccompanied Latin American teenagers, past and present. She is the founding director of U-LAMP, the Unaccompanied Latin American Minor Project, a research and service project that focuses on providing academic, social and legal support to recently arrived immigrant minors in removal proceedings. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including the Woodrow Wilson National Foundation Fellowship, the John Jay Distinguished Teaching award, the John Jay Distinguished Service to Students award, the 2020 and 2015 Kwando Kinshasa Excellence in Mentoring Award and the 2018 New York State Youth Leadership Council Outstanding Educator award. Her manuscript, Becoming Transnational Youth Workers: Independent Mexican Teenage Migrants and Pathways of Survival and Social Mobility (Rutgers University Press 2019) highlights findings from a study examining the life courses of unaccompanied, out-of-school Mexican immigrant youths living in New York City.  She has articles and book chapters in other scholarly works including Protecting Migrant Children: In Search of Best Practice (Elgar 2018), Latino Studies and Journal of Latinos and Education. She is currently developing an edited book project with her colleagues from three additional Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) (Dr. Irma V. Montelongo (UTEP), Dr. Nicholas D. Natividad (NMSU) and Dr. Angel D. Nieves (SDSU) tentatively titled Beyond Digital Fronteras: Rehumanizing Latinx Education that focuses on the use of digital tools in HSI and Latinx Studies classrooms. She is a founding member of John Jay College of Criminal Justice's Immigrant Student Success Center, the first immigrant student center in CUNY and in New York City.