Marcia Esparza earned her baccalaureate (Summa Cum Laude) at Hunter College and her doctoral degree in Sociology at the University at Albany, SUNY.  Dr. Esparza's research areas include state violence, genocide, collective memory-silence in the aftermath of mass killings and military sociology in Latin America and more recently in Spain, and in particular in the Baleares Island of Mallorca. Her research experience includes her work for the United Nations’ sponsored Truth Commission in Guatemala (1997-1999). She is the Founder and Director of the Historical Memory Project, a forum for documenting and promoting the historical memory of state violence. For further information, visit the Project's website, historicalmemoryproject.com

Dr. Esparza's monograph, Silenced Communities: Legacies of and Resistance to Militarization and Militarism in a Rural Guatemalan Town  explores the long-term footprints of war and genocide upon rural Indigenous communities impacted by the conditions of internal colonialism, which the army exploited to build its mass-based support (Berghahn Books, 2017). Her second book , co-edited with historian Nina Schneider, is a critical  examination of transitional justice in Latin America (Lexigton Books). She is also the co-editor of  Remembering the Rescuers of Victims of Human Rights Crimes in Latin America. (Lexington Books, 2016) and State Violence and Genocide in Latin American: The Cold War Years (Routledge, 2009). She is currently a co-editor for the Journal of Genocide Research (JGR).

Dr. Esparza is the recipient of prestigious fellowships from the Ford Foundation (2010-2011) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (2011-2012).