Vanessa Freije is Associate Professor of International Studies and History. Her research examines the history of information, technology, and media politics in Latin America, with a particular focus on Mexico. Her book, Citizens of Scandal: Journalism, Secrecy, and the Politics of Reckoning in Mexico, was published in October 2020 with Duke University Press and awarded the American Historical Association’s Eugenia M. Palmegiano Prize in the History of Journalism. The Spanish translation, De escándalo en escándalo, was published in 2023 by Siglo XXI. She has written various articles on rumors, the formation of the public sphere, and the right to know, which have appeared in the Hispanic American Historical Review, the Journal of Social History, and the Journal of Global History, and elsewhere. Freije’s research has also earned awards from the Latin American Studies Association Mexico Section, the American Journalism History Association, the New England Council of Latin American Studies, and the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies.

Freije is a 2026-2027 Society of Scholars fellow for her project A Signal in Every Corner of the Country: Connecting Mexico in the Satellite Era. Through a history of satellite communications in Mexico, “A Signal in every Corner” explores the meanings of connection amid the intensifying political conflicts and economic crisis after 1968. The book begins with Mexico’s first satellite connection and concludes with the 2013 installation of some 10,000 rural internet hubs. Centering protagonists such as engineers and satellite phone users, the project argues that telecommunications became the central battleground for struggles over globalization, political representation, and rural marginality.