Cynthia Salinas

Cinthia Salinas serves as the Ruben E. Hinojosa Regents Professor in Education and Associate Dean for Equity and Inclusive Excellence in the College of Education at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, where she is a core member of the Social Studies Education program area and an affiliate faculty member in the Bilingual/Bicultural and Cultural Studies in Education program areas. Salinas earned her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from The University of Texas at Austin in 1999. Her research specializations encompass critical historical inquiry in elementary bilingual and secondary social studies education, with a particular emphasis on late-arrival immigrant ESL classroom settings. She investigates social studies teachers' practices in enacting and countering official curricula through narratives that highlight civic identities, agency, and the membership of marginalized groups, contributing to broader understandings of citizenship education.

Salinas has a distinguished career marked by leadership positions such as Chair of the College and University Faculty Assembly from 2008 to 2009. She has received major awards including the 2021 Division G Mentor Award from the American Educational Research Association, the 2019 Honorary Leon Jaworski Award from Law Related Education, the 2015 Elizabeth Shatto Massey Award for Excellence in Teacher Education, the 2013 Innovations in Research on Diversity in Teacher Education Award from AERA Division K, the 2012 Regents' Outstanding Teacher Award from The University of Texas System, and the 2012 Best Paper Award from AERA Social Studies SIG. Key publications include "Disrupting the official curriculum: Cultural biography and the decision making of Latino preservice teachers" (2010), "Critical historical inquiry: The intersection of ideological clarity and pedagogical content knowledge" (2020), "The Primacy of Relation: Social Studies Teachers and the Praxis of Critical Pedagogy" (2019), and "Writing Latina/o historical narratives: Narratives at the intersection of critical historical inquiry and LatCrit" (2016). She has served on editorial boards for Theory and Research in Social Education and Multicultural Perspectives since 2013. Salinas has led significant funded projects such as the DOE Title VI NRC FLAS Fellowship Program Grant (2018-2022), the Tejano History Curriculum Project, and the NEH-funded Presidential Timeline (2007-2013). Her scholarship has been cited over 2,650 times, impacting the fields of social studies, bilingual education, and immigrant schooling.

Professional Email: cssalinas@austin.utexas.edu