Maria J. Ruiz-Martinez

María J. Ruíz-Martínez is a first-generation Queer Chicana teacher-scholar, deeply committed to transcending traditional academic boundaries and embodying a spirit of interdisciplinary curiosity in her research, teaching, and service endeavors. For the past two decades, she has worked with young people as a bilingual teacher, teacher educator, and researcher. With a background in educational linguistics, early childhood education, critical ethnic studies, and history, she employs an interdisciplinary approach to examine how transborder/transfronterizx communities teach and learn across home, school, and community contexts. Her current research utilizes art inquiry and Chicana feminist methodologies to explore artistic interventions as communication tools, tracing how transborder/transfronterizx artists create multimodal pedagogical moments that reflect and story the often obscured, intimate encounters of neighborhood, home, and self.