Rachel Nolan

Rachel Nolan is a historian of modern Latin America. In archives and through interviews, she researches political violence, the Central American armed internal conflicts, histories of childhood and the family, historical memory, and U.S.-Latin American relations. Her first book, Until I Find You: Disappeared Children and Coercive Adoptions from Guatemala, will be available January 2024 from Harvard University Press.  

Nolan received her doctorate in Latin American and Caribbean History at New York University. She holds a B.A. in History and Literature from Harvard University. Before joining the faculty at Boston University, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Columbia Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia University. Her scholarly work has received support from the Russell Sage Foundation, ACLS/Mellon Foundation, Fulbright, and Social Science Research Council.  

Prior to becoming a historian, Nolan worked as a journalist. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times, London Review of Books, New York Review of Books, and El Faro, among other publications. Nolan is a Contributing Editor at Harper’s Magazine. She is currently working on a second book about histories of deportation to Latin America.