Dr. Mario Espinoza-Kulick

Welcome to my site!

I am an educator, advocate, poet, and author. I draw from my experience as a Latinx, Indigenous, and Queer person of color to seek justice and opportunity for underserved communities. My research and teaching interests are Latinx and Indigenous migration, community health, queer of color and intersectional analysis, social movements, cultural productions, and decolonial methods.

I currently work as the Ethnic Studies Faculty lead at Cuesta College, where I teach courses in Ethnic Studies, Education, and Human Development / Human Services. My scholarship has appeared in academic venues like New Directions for Evaluation, Oxford University Press, and the Carnegie Education Blog at Leeds Beckett University, and regional news outlets like KCBX, El Latino, and the Santa Maria Times.

I’m actively involved in the community as the Vice President for the Board of Corazón del Pueblo: The Cultural and Creative Arts Center of the Santa Maria Valley, which promotes creative expression and cultural heritage. I also serve as a Board member for the Access Support Network, an organization that serves HIV and HCV-affected communities in San Luis Obispo, Monterey, and Santa Barbara counties. In my role as Senior Project Investigator at the Cal Poly Center for Health Research, I work to bridge community-academic partnerships that promote health equity and access to care for Latinx Indigenous and migrant groups.

I earned my MA and PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara as a Health Policy Research Scholar with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. I received my BA in Comparative Ethnic Studies from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.