For fall 2008 - spring 2009, I am serving as the Burton Postdoctoral Fellow at St. Joseph's University (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.) I earned my Ph.D. in May 2008 from the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin where I specialized in the study of medieval and early modern Spain, transatlantic migration, and religious minorities under Islamic and Catholic rule (in particular, conversos and Jews.)
Relying on my specialized training in Spanish paleography and Spanish and Portuguese language expertise, I conducted research in over 25 local, ecclesiastical, provincial, and national archives in Spain, Mexico, and the United States for this dissertation. I am the fortunate recipient of several research fellowships and awards, including ones provided by the Mellon Foundation, Council for European Studies, Spanish Ministry of Culture, UT-Austin College of Liberal Arts, UT-Austin Department of History, and UT-Austin Medieval Studies Program.
Prior to returning to the university, I worked for eight years in the public sector, including research and consulting positions at the Institute for the Future, the Texas Legislature, and MGT of America. I retired from this career because I found it challenging for all the wrong reasons. Lastly, I hold a Bachelor of Arts in the Humanities from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master of Public Policy from the University of California at Berkeley, and I am a PPIA Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.
I am proud to a Mexican-American and a tenth-generation native of San Antonio, Texas. I am the middle-class son of Eugene Albert Martinez Carvajal, a government cartographer, and Mary Louise Davila Gonzalez, a high school Spanish teacher.
During the 1980s, opportunity and economic necessity encouraged my father to move our family to Venezuela and Bolivia where he worked for the DOD's Inter-American Geodedic Survey. These five years abroad molded my formative teenage years. They reshaped me. They intricately wove into my identity a shared life with Venezuelans, Bolivians, and other North American and foreign expatriates. These intensive days, as well as my current international travels and studies, continue to fuel my personal fascination and academic interest in cultural and religious exchange.
Lastly, on a very personal note, the death of my father prompted my return to academia in 2001. He was our extended family's "armchair historian." Today, every moment I spend studying Spain and Colonial Spanish America is one that I continue to share with him.
