Dr. Paula Cuellar Cuellar

Jacqueline and Michael Wald created the professorship in 2017 to increase knowledge of the Holocaust and to promote the understanding, avoidance and elimination of antisemitism, genocide, bigotry and similar societal malfeasance.

“Stories of people traditionally marginalized by society are topics that go underexplored. My goal is to provide a platform for these people’s voices to be heard and rewrite – or ‘right’ – history by incorporating these voices and challenging the dominant narrative.”

Dr. Paula Cuellar Cuellar, an oral historian of modern and contemporary Latin American history, seeks to shed light on the stories of people traditionally marginalized by society during periods of human rights violation and mass violence. Her work challenges dominant historical narratives that describe the aftermath of conflicts during dictatorships, civil wars and periods of extreme violence.

She joined the Harry W. Bass Jr. School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology in 2024 and teaches courses on post-conflict societies in Latin America and their transitions to democracy, investigates disappearances in Mexico and Central America, and analyzes genocide in Latin America and its impact on women.

As an international human rights lawyer and a “Central American bilingual migrant woman,” Cuellar Cuellar said her experiences inspire her research.

In 2023, she was executive producer of the film “Añil (Indigo),” which was based on her PhD dissertation “Salvadoran Women Speak: Female Accounts of Their Struggle Within a Revolution, 1981-1992.” The United Nations Development Program-sponsored film was presented at the 2023 Ícaro International Film Festival in Central America, where it was named Best Central American Documentary, as well as being recognized at other international film festivals, including the 40th Chicago Latino Film Festival.

Before joining The University of Texas at Dallas, she was a postdoctoral teaching fellow in Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx studies at Bowdoin College in Maine. She previously held numerous fellowships, including the University of Minnesota’s Bernard and Fern Badz Fellowship in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and an American Association of University Women’s International Fellowship.

She graduated from José Simeón Cañas Central American University with a bachelor’s degree in law. She earned a Master of Arts in human rights and peace studies from the University of El Salvador and a Master of Laws in international human rights law from the University of Notre Dame. In 2022 she received a PhD in history from the University of Minnesota.

From 2005 to 2011, she served as a judicial clerk for the Supreme Court of Justice of El Salvador, for which she was also director of its International Unit from 2011 to 2012.