Congratulations to Assistant Professor Marla Ramírez (History & Chican@ and Latin@ Studies) on receiving the 2025 Mentor Award for her outstanding work as a mentor, teacher, and contributor to the UW–Madison community.
Professor Ramírez takes an innovative approach to mentoring that blends teaching, community engagement, and professional-level research opportunities for undergraduates. In 2019, she co-founded the Wisconsin Latinx History Collective to document the stories of Latinx communities across Wisconsin. Since then, the collective has grown into a statewide collaboration of faculty, students, and community members. Ramírez has trained more than 300 students in oral-history methods, whose interviews will become part of a new collection at the Wisconsin Historical Society. She also involves undergraduates as research assistants in her own scholarship, including her forthcoming book Banished Citizens: A History of the Mexican American Women Who Endured Repatriation (Harvard University Press, October 14, 2025), which traces the transgenerational effects of the interwar mass removals that expelled thousands of working-class U.S. citizen women and children alongside their families.
The transformative impact of her mentorship is reflected in the words of Lezly Vejar, who worked with Ramírez on both the Wisconsin Latinx History Collective and the Banished Citizens project before presenting her oral-history research at a national conference: “You gave me the courage I needed to stand up and speak about the work I had become so passionate and proud of. As a first-generation Mexican scholar, you understand my struggles and obstacles as well as my need to juggle my family obligations, work, and academic responsibilities. … I cannot thank you enough for instilling a newfound passion and believing in me.”
We are proud to have Professor Ramírez in our department, and we thank her for her dedication to mentoring the next generation of scholars and community-engaged researchers. Read the full award announcement here.