Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana Portfolio

Dr. Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana (She/her/hers) is a Chicana public scholar, cultural worker, educator, and muralist whose work explores migration, deportation, childhood arrivals, belonging, and human rights. Working at the intersection of scholarship, art, and community engagement, she uses digital storytelling, oral history, testimonial narratives, and public art to document and amplify the lived experiences of immigrant communities in the United States and across the U.S.–Mexico borderlands.

Dr. De La Cruz Santana earned her B.A. and M.A. in Spanish Latin American Literatures and Cultures from California State University, Fresno, and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis, specializing in Latin American Literature and Cultures with a designated emphasis in Human Rights. She was previously a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Chicano/a/x Studies in the Department of Black and Latino Studies at Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY). She is currently the Regional Partnerships Specialist at the Central Valley Immigrant Integration Collaborative (CVIIC).

Background

Born in Torrance, California, and raised between Compton, California, and Jalisco, Mexico, Dr. De La Cruz Santana comes from a family deeply shaped by migration and agricultural labor, including grandparents who participated in the Bracero Program. Her own experiences growing up across communities and cultures have informed a career dedicated to understanding how migration is remembered, narrated, and represented—and to creating spaces where immigrants can tell their own stories on their own terms.

RESEARCH FOCUS

A central focus of her scholarship is the experience of people who migrated to the United States as children, including those who have subsequently experienced deportation, exclusion, or prolonged immigration uncertainty. Her research challenges conventional legal and political categories by centering migrants' own knowledge, memories, emotions, and understandings of home and belonging. For nearly a decade, Dr. De La Cruz Santana has worked with the Humanizing Deportation project, a community-based digital storytelling initiative documenting the experiences of people affected by deportation. 

PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP

Building from this work, she has developed an innovative public scholarship practice that transforms digital archives and migrant testimony into large-scale murals and other forms of accessible public storytelling. Her public art projects include the Playas de Tijuana Mural Project, created along the U.S.–Mexico border; the U.S. Childhood Arrivals Mural Project, with installations in California and New York City; the Deported U.S. Veterans Diaspora Mural at the Tijuana–San Diego border; and the El Paso del Norte Mural Project in Ciudad Juárez. She is also co-director of the Leave No One Behind Mural Project, a participatory, multi-site digital storytelling and public art initiative centering immigrants whose experiences are frequently excluded from national conversations about childhood arrivals, immigration policy, and belonging. 

Across these projects, Dr. De La Cruz Santana approaches storytelling as more than a method of documenting experience. She sees it as a form of knowledge-making and public intervention—one capable of challenging dominant narratives about citizenship, deservingness, deportability, and who is permitted to belong. Her scholarship is grounded in Indigenous and feminist pedagogies and community-engaged methodologies that emphasize reciprocity, accessibility, collaboration, and accountability to the people whose experiences inform her work. Her research and creative practice have received support and recognition from CUNY, the National Humanities Center, the American Political Science Association, and other academic and community organizations.

About

Background

RESEARCH FOCUS

PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP