Matt Hinojosa (he/him) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at Princeton University and visiting scholar at the University of Texas at Austin Mexican American and Latina/o Studies Department. He specializes in nineteenth and twentieth-century US history, race & ethnicity, and urban studies, with an emphasis on twentieth-century US Chicana/o and Latina/o social movements.

His dissertation focuses on post-WWII community-police relations in US Latino communities, arguing that police violence was a central animating factor in the long Latino Civil Rights Movement. His research examines the struggle against police brutality by urban and rural Latinos in the Southwest, Northeast, and Midwest. It examines how both civil rights-oriented and radical political responses to police violence influenced shifts in policy by local, state, and federal officials, judiciaries, and law enforcement agencies.

Hinojosa is a proud first-generation college student and community college alumnus from San Antonio, Texas, earning an AA from Northwest Vista College, dual BAs in Anthropology and Mexican American Studies from the University of Texas at San Antonio, and MAs in History from UTSA and Princeton University.

His research has been supported by fellowships and funding from the Mellon Humanities Pathways Program, the Mellon Just Futures Democratizing Racial Justice Project, the McNair Scholars Program, the National Council of La Raza, UTSA Mexican American Studies, the Nau Scholars Program, the Effron Center for the Americas, and the Princeton University President’s Fellowship.

Photo credit: Nathan Barrera