Kaitlin M. Murphy is Associate Professor of Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory and Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Arizona. Murphy researches and teaches on art and politics, memory, civil and human rights, and building and rebuilding communities and public spaces during and after conflict. 

Murphy is the author of Mapping Memory: Visuality, Affect, and Embodied Politics in the Americas (Fordham UP), which interweaves visual and performance theory with memory and affect studies to theorize memory mapping as a visual and spatial strategy that has emerged in opposition to political discourses and visual economies that overlook certain subjects and human rights abuses. She is co-editor of the recently-published Routledge Handbook of Memory Activism, and her writing can be found in Memory Studies, Genocide Studies and Prevention, TDR: The Drama Review, Journal of Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Journal of Spanish and Latin American Cinemas, Human Rights Review, in various anthologies, and elsewhere. She is also currently at work on two book-length projects, the first of which is tentatively titled Future Histories: Memory, Violence, and Decolonial Reimaginings.

In addition to her academic work, Murphy works as a consultant in both English and Spanish in a range of areas, including memory, civil and human rights, transitional justice and community-based reconciliation and post-conflict reconstruction. She is a lifelong dancer and visual artist and loves curating exhibitions and making, seeing, and talking about art. Murphy received her PhD in Performance Studies and MA in Visual Culture, both from New York University, and her BA in Community Studies from the University of California Santa Cruz. Murphy completed an executive education program in Public Leadership at Harvard University’s Kennedy School in 2022. 

Research, Teaching, and Advising Areas:
Social, cultural, and critical theory, including visual and performance studies, decolonial theory, hemispheric American Studies, affect, memory and human rights, and post-conflict recovery.

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