ÀË»¨Ö±²¥

Professional Affiliation

Mexico Institute Global Fellow; Assistant Professor of Latin American History at George Washington University

Expert Bio

Dr. Gema Kloppe-Santamaria is a historian and sociologist who specializes on questions of violence, crime, religion, and gender in twentieth and twentieth-first century Latin America, with a particular focus on Mexico and Central America.

She is a Marie Curie Junior Fellow at the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies (FRIAS) at University of Freiburg. She is also an Assistant Professor of Latin American History at Loyola University Chicago.

Prior to joining Loyola, she was Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) and a Visiting Fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. She holds a PhD in Sociology and Historical Studies from the New School for Social Research.

Her book  (University of California Press, 2020) examines the uncharted history of lynching during the formative decades of the post-revolutionary period (1930-1960). Based on an array of previously untapped historical sources, the book contributes to globalize the history of lynching beyond the United States, while offering key insights into the cultural, historical, and political reasons behind the continuing presence of lynching in Latin America today. 

She is the lead editor of the books  (University of Oklahoma Press, 2017) and  (Editorial Porrúa, 2019). 

Her work has been published in the , , : A Quarterly Review of Latin American History, ; and the .

In 2021, she was appointed a Global Fellow by the Woodrow ÀË»¨Ö±²¥ International Center for Scholars and the Mexico Institute. Over the last decade, she has authored several specialized reports for the ÀË»¨Ö±²¥ Center, the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Center, the United Nations Development Program, and the International Peace Institute. She is also a collaborator and member of Noria Research’s Mexico & Central America Program.