Position: Associate Professor
Fields: Latina/o History, Modern U.S., Modern Latin America
Office: 314 Old Horticulture
Phone: 517-884-4943
Email: dmf@msu.edu
Dr. Fernandez-Jones was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan among a large, tight-knit Mexican and Puerto Rican community. A MexiRican Latina and first-generation college student, she earned a B.A. in history from Grand Valley State University and both her M.A. and Ph.D. in history from The Ohio State University. She is currently an assistant professor of history at Michigan State University. She is also a core faculty member of the Chicano/Latino Studies Program.
Drawing on her lived experiences as a Latina in Michigan and extensive primary source research, her work centers on Latino placemaking in the Midwest. She is the author of Making the MexiRican City: Mexican and Puerto Rican Migration, Activism, and Placemaking in Grand Rapids, Michigan (University of Illinois Press, 2023). Her book details how disparate Latino communities came together to respond to social, racial, and economic challenges and simultaneously transformed Grand Rapids and the Midwest from the 1920s to the 1970s. She is also the author of two award winning articles on Latinos in Michigan.
She regularly teaches courses for undergraduate and graduate students in US History, Research Methods, and Chicano/Latino Studies. These courses often engage the MSU Main Library, the Digital Scholarship Lab, and the LEADR Lab.
For more information please see: https://deliafernandezjones.com/