Katy Maldonado Dominguez

Katy Maldonado Dominguez is a Honduran first-generation PhD candidate in American Studies. She received her bachelor’s degrees from UCLA in Chicana/o Studies and Geography. Her research interests are shaped by her experiences as a Central American immigrant from Honduras and DACA recipient. Her dissertation explores how Central American students think about identity, belonging, and kinship within a context of displacement. She challenges the homogenization of Latine student experiences by highlighting the specific lived academic realities of Central American students. In addition, she examines how Undocumented Queer parents create and navigate family as they resist the twin pressures of xenophobia and homophobia. Her work appears in the anthology We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the United States edited by Leisy Abrego and Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales.