Please join CLLAS in celebrating the 10th anniversary of the NIU Latinx Oral History Project with our annual conference Treinta y tres on Latinx oral histories. We are proud to present as keynote speaker Lilia Fernandez Ph.D., professor of history at University of Illinois Chicago.

Lilia Fernández specializes in the history of Latinxs in the mid-to-late-20th century United States. Her research interests lie at the intersection of urban history, labor and working-class politics, and economic inequality. Her first book, "Brown in the Windy City: Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Postwar Chicago," focused on the migration and settlement of these two populations in the city’s central neighborhoods and the communities they formed.

More recently, Fernández has examined the history of Latinxs in New Jersey. For six years at Rutgers University, she founded and led the Latino New Jersey History Project, documenting the state’s diverse Latinx populations through student-led oral histories and web-based public history projects. She also collaborated with the Voces Oral History Center at UT Austin to document the experiences of New Jersey’s Latinxs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Her current research continues to examine Latinx history in the Chicago area, focusing specifically on cross-ethnic interactions among Latinxs, their labor politics, class dynamics, activism and strategic articulations of a panethnic identity.