History Department

Education

• B.A., Chicana/o Studies, History, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), 2019

About

Joel is a first-generation scholar and migrant from Guerrero, Mexico in the Department of History with a Designated Emphasis (D.E.) in Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis. His area of expertise is Latin American history, particularly focusing on Mexico, the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, and the Mexican diaspora. 

His dissertation traces the history of the American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO) and the creation of transnational environmental and public health disasters along the U.S.-Mexico border, focusing on Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. He aims to situate the contemporary environmental crisis of poisoned subsoils and lead poisoning along the El Paso-Ciudad Juárez borderland via the environmental humanities, Chicanx/Latinx Studies, and the history of science, medicine, and technology from the late nineteenth century to the present.

Research Focus

• Environmental History
• History of Science and Medicine
• Mining and Extraction in Latin America
• U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
• Chicanx and Latinx Studies
• Hemispheric Indigenous Studies

Publications

• "Conversation Piece: Bodies" with Lydia Tuan, Yale University, Routledge Handbook of Medical and Environmental Humanities, edited by Victoria Bates, Amber Abrams, and Rocío Gomez (London: Taylor and Francis). Under contract; anticipated publication date, 2025. 
• Olea-Calixto, Joel. “Review of Data Borders: How Silicon Valley is Building an Industry around Immigrants by Melissa Villa-Nicholas.” Western Historical Quarterly. Anticipated publication date September 2024.
• Eva Amarillas, Katy Maldonado, Joel Olea-Calixto, Julio Reyes, German Aguilar-Tinajero, and Yadira Valencia. "UndocuBruins: Critical Race Theory in the Forming of Resources for Undocumented Students.” Center for Critical Race Studies in Education at UCLA Research Briefs (2019)

Honors & Awards (Selected)

• 2025 Dibner Research Fellow in the History of Science and Technology, The Huntington Library
• 2023-2024 Mellon/American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Dissertation Innovation Fellowship 
• 2024 Marxist Institute for Research (MIR) Summer Seminar
• 2024 Newberry Consortium in American Indian and Indigenous Studies Summer Institute, Newberry Library 
• 2023 Humanities Program Graduate Summer Fellowship  
• 2023 Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship (Honorable Mention) 
• 2022 Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship (Honorable Mention) 
• 2022 Hemispheric Institute on the Americas Summer Research Fellowship  
• 2021-2022 Davis Humanities Institute Research Cluster Grant 
• 2021 Dean's Summer Graduate Fellowship  
• 2021 Mellon Research Initiative on Racial Capitalism Fellowship (2021)
• 2020 American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education Graduate Student Fellowship (2020)
• 2020 MCT Wakeham Fellowship (2020)
• 2020 Hemispheric Institute on the Americas Language Study Award (2020)
• 2019-2020 UC Davis Provost Fellowship in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (2019-2020)