Heidi Tinsman

Biography

Heidi Tinsman, Ph.D., is Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, and affiliated faculty in the departments of Gender & Sexuality Studies and Chicano-Latino Studies. She is currently Director of the UCI Center for Latin American & Caribbean studies and served as History Department Chair from 2019 to 2022. She received her Ph.D. in History from Yale University in 1996 and was a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford University, where she earned a Senior B.Phil. in History in 1988. She did her undergraduate studies in History and Latin American Studies at Princeton University. Tinsman's research focuses on gender, agrarian labor, and transnational history in modern Latin America, with particular attention to Chile and Peru.

Tinsman is the author of three books, including "Partners in Conflict: The Politics of Gender, Sexuality, and Labor in the Chilean Agrarian Reform, 1950-1973" (Duke University Press, 2002) and "Buying into the Regime: Consumption and Grapes in Cold War Chile and the United States" (Duke University Press, 2014). Both books have been translated into Spanish and published in Chile. Her current book manuscript, "Bound Brothers: Chinese Labor, Masculinity, and Nation in Nineteenth Century Peru and Chile," is under contract with University of California Press.She has published extensively in journals including the American Historical Review, Hispanic American Historical Review, SIGNS, Latin American Research Review, Journal of Asian American Studies, Journal of Global History, LABOR, and Radical History Review. She is also co-editor with Sandhya Shukla of the book, "Imagining Our Americas: Toward a Transnational Frame,"(Duke University Press, 2007).

Tinsman received a John Simon Memorial Guggenheim Fellowship in 2015 and was named a University of California Irvine Chancellor's Distinguished Fellow from 2004 to 2007. She has served on the editorial collective of Radical History Review since 1996, including as Chair from 2002 to 2005 and 2020 to 2024, and served on the Board of Editors of the American Historical Review from 2017 to 2020. She directed the University of California Education Abroad Program in Santiago, Chile from 2007 to 2009 and has held visiting professorships at Universidad Alberto Hurtado and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

Education

• Ph.D. in History, Yale University, 1996
• B.Phil. in History, Balliol College, Oxford University, 1988
• A.B. in History, Princeton University, 1986

Distinctions

• John Simon Memorial Guggenheim Fellowship, 2015
• American Council of Learned Societies Faculty Fellowship (SSRC-NEH), 2002-2003
• Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Fellowship, 2003
• Best Special Issue for 2004, Council of Editors of Learned Journals for Issue 89 Radical History Review, Our Americas, 2004
• University of California Irvine Chancellor's Distinguished Fellow, 2004-2007
• UCI School of Humanities Teaching & Mentoring Award, 2025
• Rhodes Scholarship, Oxford University, 1986-1988