Biography

Virginia Espino is a native daughter of California, born and raised in northeastern Los Angeles. She is an oral and public historian whose research focuses on health activism, motherhood and the uses of public space. She earned her PhD from Arizona State University writing about population control politics and reproductive injustice during the 1970s. Her research has been published in the Chicano Studies Journal, Aztlan and her investigation into the history of coercive sterilization at the Los Angeles-USC Medical Center provided the impetus for the documentary film,No Más Bebés, for which she is a Producer and Lead Historian. As a series leader for Latina and Latino History at UCLA’s Center for Oral History Research she developed oral history series that document the California Latina/o community and helped the Center build a valuable archive for scholars and the public at large.