Elizabeth Gaxiola

Elizabeth Gaxiola (PhD) is a Latina interdisciplinary scholar. Her transnational identity has cultivated her research and teaching interests. She gained her Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science with a Spanish minor and her Master of Arts in Education with a focus on Indigenous and Multicultural Education and Language Planning & Policy. She received her doctoral degree in the Teaching, Learning, and Sociocultural Studies Department at the University of Arizona with a focus on Social Justice & Diversity and Immigration & Education. Her minor is Mexican American Studies. Her scholarly interests are border and migration studies, Latin American Studies, activism & artivism, and arts-based literacies and pedagogies. Her dissertation research “La Casa de Papel: El Ruido de Tus Voces-Creating Emancipatory Spaces and Search for Well-Being in our Borderlands” aimed to explore how testimonios,  pláticas, convivencia, and arts-based activities allowed individuals to express their feelings and narrate their migration stories. The research was conducted in numerous migrant shelters in Sonora, Mexico. It was framed as qualitative arts-based research with ethnographic methods.