Dr. Yolanda Valencia is a Mexican American Indian, scholar, writer, and teacher. In2019, Dr. Valencia completed her PhD in geography at the University of Washington, Seattle. That same year, she joined the University of Maryland Baltimore County as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Geography and Environmental Systems. Drawing on over ten years of fieldwork that includes testimonios, interviews, and trans-border ethnography, her work focuses on understanding how Mexican American Indians residing in what we know as the United States make livable life amid state-sponsored violence in the US (and across national/colonial borders). Her work has been published in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers; Gender, Place, and Culture; Antipode; ACME, NACLA; UC Press; and University of Georgia Press. Developing the concepts of relational life and legal death, Dr. Valencia is currently working on two journal articles and a book monograph. She teaches classes on Qualitative Methods in Geography and Beyond, Latin American Geographies, and Geographies of Migration.