Raquel Rubio-Goldsmith is lecturer and co-director of the Binational Migration Institute in the Department of Mexican American Studies at the University of Arizona. Born and raised in Douglas, Arizona, she studied law and philosophy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She was a founding faculty member of the history department at Pima Community College, where during her thirty-year tenure she helped create some of the first courses in Mexican American history and Chicana/o studies. She joined the Department of Mexican American Studies at the University of Arizona in 1983, where she eventually founded the Binational Migration Institute, which over the years has conducted some of the most in-depth studies on the immigration and conditions along the US-Mexico border. She is the author of numerous publications in the field of Chicana/o History, including: "Hispanics and the Humanities in Arizona" (1986); "Shipwrecked in the Desert: A Short History of the Mexican Sisters of the House of Dive Providence in Douglas, Arizona 1927–1949" (1987); "Seasons, Seeds, and Souls: Mexicanas Gardening in the American Mesilla" (1994); "The Funnel Effect and Recovered Bodies of Unauthorized Migrants, 1990–2005" (2006); "Ethno-Racial Profiling and State Violence in a Southwest Barrio," (2009); "The Border Community and Immigration Stress Scale" (2012); Migrant Deaths in the Arizona Desert: La Vida No Vale Nada (2016). Over the decades, Professor Rubio-Goldsmith has also worked with many community organizations in Arizona dedicated to the rights of women and immigrants. In this interview, she discusses: her family background and upbringing; her educational journey from Douglas High School to UNAM in Mexico City; her legal work in Mexico; joining the history department at Pima Community College and creating classes in Chicana/o studies; her reflections on the state of Chicana/o studies and how the field evolved over her career; the aims and contributions of her scholarship in the field; the reception of Chicana/o studies at Pima and the University of Arizona; her work in the community; founding the Binational Migration Institute at UA and the research projects undertaken; as well as her thoughts on important works, themes, and high points in the field's development over the last fifty years.