Julie M. Weise is Associate Professor of History at the University of Oregon. She is the author of Corazón de Dixie: Mexicanos in the U.S. South since 1910  (UNC Press, 2015), which garnered an Organization of American Historians book award among others. The manuscript for her second book, Guest Worker: Lives across Borders in an Age of Prosperity, is under contract with UNC Press. Her research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the School for Advanced Research, the American Philosophical Society, the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, the Gerda Henkel Foundation, and Fulbright France.

Julie is co-founder of the Translations of Migration research group (together with Christoph Rass), the Nuestro South social media public history project (together with Erik Valera), and the Teach in Spanglish bilingual history curriculum (together with Claudia Holguín Mendoza). Her writing and commentary on immigration politics and temporary worker programs have appeared in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Raleigh News & Observer, Time.com, Univision.com, The Conversation, The Oregonian, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and other outlets.

Outside of academia, she worked as a researcher and speechwriter on migration issues in the administration of Mexican president Vicente Fox and as an immigration paralegal and policy researcher at non-profit organizations in Los Angeles. She earned her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees at Yale, with undergraduate majors in Anthropology and Ethnicity, Race, and Migration and graduate degrees in History.

Julie’s interest in migration history arose during the turbulent 1990s, as she watched her fellow Californians pass a harsh anti-immigrant ballot measure. Her education had left her clueless about the histories of Latinos in her city or the roots of the movement that resented them so. A college class in Mexican American history, the first that had been offered at Yale in a generation, provided those explanations. Julie was hooked, and now finds her deepest personal fulfillment in working with students as they grapple with these histories too.

The Pacific Northwest is weird, but Julie has made it her home. She enjoys bicycle commuting in the rain, running half marathons along the Willamette River, volunteering at Eugene’s small but mighty synagogue, and taking traffic-free camping trips with her two children and her husband, who is a social worker.