Rebeca Martinez-Tibbles
Biography
Rebeca Martínez-Tibbles is a PhD Candidate specializing in the history of women in colonial Mexico. Her dissertation examines the relationship between women and bigamy from the 16th to the 18th century.
Current/Former HGSA Member
Advanced to Candidacy
Research
My research centers on women in colonial Mexico. My doctoral dissertation explores how Indigenous, African, European, and mixed-race women navigated and challenged gendered, marital, and sexual norms from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. More broadly, my work engages questions of race, gender, religion, sexuality, and Enlightenment thought in New Spain and the wider Atlantic World.
Publications
Martínez-Tibbles, Rebeca. “Colonial Mexican Women in Bigamy Cases: A New Way to Examine Women in Past Societies.” EPOCH Magazine, 1 Mar. 2024. https://www.epoch-magazine.com/post/colonial-mexican-women-in-bigamy-cases-a-new-way-to-examine-women-in-past-societies.
Manzano, David. El imperio español en Oceanía. Sillares. Revista de Estudios Históricos (Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León), June 7, 2023.
Awards & Grants
17th and 18th Century Center Graduate Student Travel Award
● Travel grant awarded to support poster presentation, “Preliminary Results of Caribbean Survey,” Association of Caribbean Historians Annual Conference in Trinidad and Tobago.
CMRS-CEGS Graduate Student Summer Award
● Recipient of the CMRS-CEGS Graduate Student Summer Award for research and training in global studies (300–1600 CE).
Fulbright Hays – DDRA Fellowship (UCLA)
● Year long fellowship supporting research in Mexico City, MX and Seville, SP.
Graduate Student Research Travel Award (UCLA)
● Travel grant to support research in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to consult the Scholes Papers.
Graduate Research Mentorship (UCLA)
● Research award for dissertation preparation on bigamous colonial Mexican women.
Graduate Student Research Mentorship (UCLA)
● Grant for summer research on bigamous colonial Mexican women, 16th c. – 18th c.
Doctoral Student Travel Grant (UCLA)
● Grant awarded for preliminary field research in Mexico City.
Conference Presentations
“Results of Caribbean Survey,” Association of Caribbean Historians (Trinidad and Tobago), 2025
Understanding Political Systems and the Now (Manhattan Beach, CA), 2025
American Historical Association Conference (New York, NY), 2025
Western Association of Women’s History Conference (Portland, OR), 2024
American Historical Association HAHR Representative, 2024
Talk for the Journal Sillares (Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo Léon), 2023
University of California, Irvine HGSA 2021 Conference
Undergraduate Conference Discussant (UCLA), 2019
