Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez is Regents Professor and founding director emeritus of the School of Transborder Studies at Arizona State University. Born and raised in Nogales, Arizona, Professor Vélez-Ibáñez received his PhD in anthropology from UC San Diego in 1975. In the years that followed, he held faculty positions at San Diego State University, UCLA, the University of Arizona, and UC Riverside before coming to Arizona State in 2005 to chair the Chicana/o Studies Department. In addition to serving as founding director of the School of Transborder Studies at ASU, he also helped found the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology at the University of Arizona and directed the Ernesto Galarza Applied Research Center at UC Riverside. He is the author of numerous publications within the field of Chicana/o Studies, including: "The Aged and the Political Process: An Anthropological Analysis of the Spanish-Speaking Elderly in the United States" (1973); Rituals of Marginality: Politics, Process, and Cultural Change in Central Urban Mexico (1983); Bonds of Mutual Trust: The Cultural Systems of Rotating Credit Associations Among Urban Mexicans and Chicanos (1983); Border Visions: The Cultures of Mexicans of Southwest United States (1996); Transnational Latina/o Communities: Politics, Processes, and Culture (2002); An Impossible Living in a Transborder World: Culture, Confianza, and Economy of Mexican-Origin Populations (2010); and The US-Mexico Transborder Region: Cultural Dynamics and Historical Interactions (2017). In this interview Professor Vélez-Ibáñez discusses: his family background and upbringing; his educational journey from high school to attending the University of Arizona; his early teaching in Mexican American Studies at San Diego State; his graduate experience at UC San Diego; his reflections on the state of Chicana/o Studies during the early years and how the field evolved over the decades; the aims and contributions of his scholarship in the field; the reception of Chicana/o Studies at the universities he served; the research centers he directed; the developing the School of Transborder Studies at Arizona State; as well as his thoughts on important works, themes, and high points in the field's development over the last fifty years.