Rachel Nolan
Assistant Professor of International Relations
Rachel Nolan is a historian of modern Latin America. Her research focuses on political violence, Central American civil wars, childhood and the family, historical memory, and U.S.-Latin American relations. She is currently completing a book manuscript on the history of international adoption from Guatemala. Her research has been funded by the Social Science Research Council, Fulbright, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and the ACLS/Mellon Foundation. Dr. Nolan holds a B.A. in History and Literature from Harvard University and a doctorate in Latin American and Caribbean History from New York University. Her dissertation won a Dean’s Outstanding Dissertation Award and NYU’s Outstanding Dissertation Award for the Humanities.
Before joining the faculty at Boston University, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Columbia Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia University. Prior to becoming a historian, Dr. Nolan worked as a journalist. Her writing has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times, the London Review of Books, and El Faro, among other publications.
Professor Nolan’s areas of expertise include political violence, Central America, Mexico, civil and dirty wars in Latin America, genocide, history of childhood and the family, deportation history, and U.S.-Latin American relations.
