she/her/ella
Social Sciences Division
Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow
Staff
Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas
Postdoctoral Scholar
Crown College Faculty Wing
215
Merrill/Crown Faculty Services
Dr. Vanessa Moreno Wilcox is currently a Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Latin American and Latino Studies at UC Santa Cruz where she is conducting a research project titled "Mexicana and Chicana Placemaking as Social Justice Activism in Northern California" utilizing archival materials from the Dolores Huerta Papers and Dolores Huerta Foundation Papers under the mentorship of Dr. Gabriela F. Arredondo. She is the daughter of Mexican migrants and was raised in the San Joaquín Valley (Yokuts lands) and San Francisco Bay Area (Ohlone lands) of Northern California. Vanessa is of P'urhépecha heritage on her paternal side, with her father originating from Aguililla, Michoacán, and of Tepehuán/Acaxee heritage on her maternal side, with her mother originating from the El Comedero region of Sinaloa. She received her PhD in Mexican American Studies from The University of Arizona in Spring 2025 and completed her dissertation titled Intergenerational Displacement in Aguililla-Redwood City: Migration from Michoacán and Diaspora in Northern California. Vanessa is a co-founding member of the P'urhépecha Studies Collective as of 2024. She is a former Crossing Latinidades Mellon Humanities Fellow (2022-2023) and Bilinski Fellow (2023-2024). Vanessa is also an alumna of San José State University where she received her BA in Psychology with a minor in Latin American Studies, along with San Francisco State University where she received her MA in Anthropology.
Vanessa is an interdisciplinary scholar who applies a Critical Indigenous theoretical approach to her work to produce decolonial intersectional scholarship centering Mexican, Chicanx, Latinx, and Indigenous peoples. She is an Indigenous mother-scholar, knowledge keeper, and storyteller, and seeks to honor her ancestors and diasporic communities through her academic research by preserving and restoring their traditional knowledges and histories for generational healing and collective memory. Her academic research explores Mexican migration and diaspora, intergenerational displacement, placemaking, collective memory, survivance, kinship, Indigenous and Chicana feminisms, Traditional Food Knowledge, and Mexican foodways. Vanessa practices decolonial methodologies by emphasizing Indigenous survivance, relationality, and reciprocity, while utilizing community-based research, Indigenous ethnography and autoethnography, oral tradition and history, archival research, genealogical research, and digital humanities.
Topics: Mexican migration and diaspora, intergenerational displacement, placemaking, collective memory, survivance, kinship, Indigenous and Chicana feminisms, Traditional Food Knowledge, Mexican foodways
Methodologies: community-based research, Indigenous ethnography and autoethnography, oral tradition and history, archival research, geneaological research, digital humanities
Geographic Locations: Northern California, Tierra Caliente of Michoacán, Mexico
Fields of Study: Chicanx/Latinx Studies, P'urhépecha Studies, Critical Indigenous Studies, Native American/Indigenous Anthropology, Food Studies
Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship in Latinx Studies 2025-2027, UC Santa Cruz
The Russell J. and Dorothy S. Bilinski Fellowship 2023-2024, The University of Arizona
Crossing Latinidades Mellon Humanities Fellowship 2022-2023, The University of Arizona/University of Illinois Chicago
Social and Behavioral Sciences Graduate College Fellowship 2022-2023, The University of Arizona
Hispanic Alumni Graduate Scholarship 2021, The University of Arizona
Social and Behavioral Sciences Graduate College Fellowship 2021, The University of Arizona
Graduate Access Fellowship 2020-2021, The University of Arizona
Social and Behavioral Sciences Graduate College Fellowship 2020-2021, The University of Arizona
Conference Presentations (within the last year):
Co-organizer for panel titled “Indigenous Foodways and Traditional Food Knowledge in North America” and presenting paper titled “Placemaking in the Aguilillense Diaspora of Northern California: Indigenous Foodways and Ancestral Maternal Knowledge” at the 2025 American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting at the New Orleans Marriott in New Orleans, Louisiana on November 21, 2025.
Presented paper titled “Indigenous Survivance in Aguililla, Michoacán, Mexico: From P’urhépecha Tributary Community to Mestizo Pueblo” at the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Conference at The University of Oklahoma in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on June 26, 2025.
Co-organizer for panel titled “P’urhépecha Studies Collective: New P’urhépecha Studies in the USA (Part One)” and roundtable session titled “New Directions in P’urhépecha Studies” with P’urhépecha Studies Collective at the Latin American Studies Association Conference in San Francisco, California on May 24, 2025.
Presented paper titled “Indigenous Foodways and Traditional Food Knowledge in the Aguilillense Diaspora of Northern California” at the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Conference at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Albuquerque, New Mexico on April 4, 2025.
Presented paper titled “Indigenous Foodways in the Aguilillense Diaspora of Northern California” as part of a panel titled “Anthropology of Diaspora Foodways: New Directions in Praxis” invited by the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, FL on November 21, 2024.
Organized a panel titled “The P’urhépecha People of Michoacán, Mexico: Indigeneity in Diaspora and en la Madre Tierra” and presented paper titled “Conocimientos desde Aguililla, Michoacán: Assembling a Collective Memory in the P’urhépecha Diaspora” at the Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social Summer Institute at UNAM – Oaxaca in Oaxaca City, Oaxaca, Mexico on June 26, 2024.
Moreno Wilcox, Vanessa. 2025. Intergenerational Displacement in Aguililla-Redwood City: Migration from Michoacán and Diaspora in Northern California. PhD Dissertation. The University of Arizona.
Moreno Wilcox, Vanessa. 2024. “Intergenerational Displacement and Diaspora from Aguililla, Michoacán: Archives, Collective Memory, and Survivance". Pasados 1(2):161–180.