Rate My Professor Konane Martinez

Konane Martinez is a Professor in the Anthropology department at California State University, San Marcos. She earned her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Riverside, under the mentorship of Dr. Michael Kearney, along with a master’s degree in Anthropology from UC Riverside and a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and Spanish from Humboldt State University. Prior to joining the CSUSM Anthropology faculty in 2007, Dr. Martinez served as health projects coordinator at the university’s National Latino Research Center. She has served as Chair of the Anthropology Department, was appointed Faculty Director of the National Latino Research Center in 2022, and in 2017 joined the California Department of Public Health’s Advisory Group for the Office of Binational Border Health, where she contributes to strategic planning, advising on regional issues, and fostering binational partnerships on border health policy.

With over 20 years as an applied anthropologist focused on Latino immigrant communities in the U.S.-Mexico border region, Dr. Martinez specializes in critical medical anthropology, transnationalism, border health, health disparities, disaster preparedness for vulnerable communities, and culturally and linguistically appropriate health care services. Her research investigates how immigrant and transnational communities navigate California’s health and social service structures amid shifting policies. She currently leads a project on the history and cultural significance of La Virgen de las Nieves in southern Mexico. A founding member of the Farmworker CARE Coalition of over 40 agencies, she has improved health outcomes for farmworkers in San Diego County. In 1999, she participated in California’s first statewide health needs assessment of agricultural workers, and her dissertation analyzed clinical health care for a transnational Mixtec community in Oaxaca’s Mixteca Baja. Dr. Martinez teaches general anthropology and courses on immigrant health, farmworker health, health disparities, and equity. Key publications include Full Circle: The Method of Collaborative Anthropology for Regional and Transnational Research in Migration and Health: A Research Methods Handbook (University of California Press, 2014); Coming out of the Dark: Emergency Preparedness Plan for Farmworkers in California (2009); San Diego Firestorm 2007 Report: Fire Impact on Farmworkers and Migrant Communities in North County; Empowered Action during Disasters: Disaster Preparedness among Migrant Farmworker Communities in the United States; and The Border that Unites and Divides: Addressing Border Health in California. She authored the first U.S. disaster preparedness plan for farmworkers and assessed 2007 wildfire impacts on these communities.