Rafael Martínez is an assistant professor of Southwest Borderlands in the College of Interdisciplinary Humanities and Communication. Rafael’s work focuses on immigration, migration, the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, and the American Southwest. At ASU, he teaches courses on the American Southwest, the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, and Popular Culture Issues. Rafael is also a Program Faculty for the MA Narrative Studies program in CISA. 

As an advocate of community-based-history projects, Rafael is engaged in public projects that seek to connect academic work with community development. As such, he is a current recipient of Knowledge Exchange for Resilience Fellowship where he is co-creating community based research on undocumented populations in the Phoenix Valley. Rafael is part of the inaugural Interdisciplinary Solutions for Social Impact Graduate Faculty program.

Additionally, Rafael is the co-founder of the statewide oral history project, Humans of New Mexico, and also UndocuTalks, a podcast on immigrant rights through an undocumented perspective.