Mónica A. Jiménez is a poet and historian. She is currently assistant professor in the African and African Diaspora Studies Department at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research and writing explore the intersections of law, race, and empire in Latin America and the Caribbean. Her first book of, Making Never-Never Land: Race and Law in the Creation of Puerto Rico, which offers a legal history of race and exception in the relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico, will be published in 2024 by the University of North Carolina Press.

Dr. Jiménez has received fellowships in support of her work from the Institute for Citizens and Scholars (formerly the Woodrow Wilson Foundation) and the Ford Foundation, among others. In 2021, she was named an inaugural Letras Boricuas fellow by the Mellon and Flamboyan Arts Foundations. She holds a PhD in history from the University of Texas at Austin and a JD from the University of Texas School of Law. Her poetry and scholarly writing have appeared or is forthcoming in WSQ: Women Studies Quarterly, Latino Studies, CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Radical History Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and sx salon, among others.