Guadalupe García joined the Department of Urban Studies and Planning as Associate Professor in July 2024. Dr. García received her Ph.D. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was an Associate Professor of History at Florida International University in Miami and at Tulane University in New Orleans prior to her appointment at UCSD. 

Professor García's research brings together her interests in the history of Cuba and the Caribbean. Her work explores the relationship between colonialism, urban geographies, and the built ecologies of the Spanish Caribbean. Her first book, Beyond the Walled City: Colonial Exclusion in Havana (University of California Press, 2016) narrates a history of Havana that begins with the city’s founding in the early sixteenth century and extends through the end of the U.S. military occupation in 1902. Professor García’s current project extends from questions raised during this groundbreaking foray into colonial, Caribbean urban history; she is focused on rearticulating the geography of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Havana through the gendered lens of Black freedom and enslavement.

García’s essays and articles have appeared in the Journal of Latin American Studies, Cultural Studies, Urban History, and Platform. Her work has been widely recognized in the US and abroad, and her fellowships and awards include a Distinguished Fellowship at the CUNY Grad Center's Advanced Research Collaborative and research and digital fellowships at the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, Rhode Island. She has also held a Transatlantic Research Fellowship at the University of Warwick in the UK.

Her intellectual and research interests are reflected in her work across the profession. She is the Managing Director of Keywords for Black Louisiana, a public-facing, Black DH project creating digital editions of annotated, transcribed and translated manuscript documents from 18thc. French and Spanish Louisiana that highlight Black life and the culture of the Gulf Coast. She also sits on the Board of the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) and is currently the President of the Latin American and Caribbean Section of the Southern Historical Association.

Professor García's research and teaching brings into relief the importance of methodological innovation and collaborate work. Her work with graduate students received the 2021-2022 Presidential Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching from Tulane University, where she was previously in the Department of History with affiliations in Latin American Studies and Africana Studies. At UCSD, Dr. García teaches courses on the cities and geographies of Latin America and the circum-Caribbean, as well as on digital and archival methods.