About

I am an Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas at El Paso. Prior to UTEP, I taught at Rollins College from 2019 to 2024. I earned my PhD in History from Cornell University in 2019. My first book, Beyond Patriotic Phobias: Connections, Cooperation, and Solidarity in the Peruvian-Chilean Pacific World (Oakland: University of California Press, 2022), won honorable mentions for the Flora Tristán Award (best book on Peru) given by the Peru Section of LASA and Best Book (Social Sciences) on the Southern Cone given by the Southern Cone Studies Section of LASA. The book has been translated into Spanish and published in Peru (Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú) and Chile (Instituto de Historia, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) as Más allá de la guerra: Historias de cooperación en el Pacífico peruano-chileno, 1856-1929. I have also published articles in Hispanic American Historical Review and Journal of Social History, which won the Premio José María Arguedas Prize for best article on Peru (LASA), and Best Graduate Student Paper on Labor Studies (LASA), respectively. Recently I published articles in the Journal of Historical Geography and Macrohistoria. In 2026, Ernesto Capello and I co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Urban History titled “Capital Cities of Latin America: New Approaches and Scales.”

Since 2026 I have taken on the role as the history and social sciences book review editor for A Contracorriente: una revista de estudios latinoamericanos.

My research and writing have been funded by the American Council of Learned Societies, Ford Foundation, Fulbright, Social Science Research Council, Cornell University, and Rollins College.

After finishing my undergraduate degree at the University of California, Davis in 2007, I worked as a union organizer with AFSCME Local 3299 in San Diego, California for two years. In 2012 I completed an MA in History at Tufts University and then went on to Cornell for the doctorate.

My research interests are in labor and working-class history, social movements, oceans, history of medicine, and the state.

At the moment I am in the early stages of two book length projects: one on labor history in Callao, Peru from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century; and another on the Comité Pro-Derecho Indígena Tahuantinsuyo in 1920s Arequipa, Peru.

Contact: jpsavala [@] utep.edu