UCLA

The doctoral dissertation study explored the healing experiences of U.S Centroamericana student survivors impacted by sexual and relationship violence in higher education. Emerging literature has focused on reimagining healing through identity and race-conscious lenses that position individual, wholistic, and communal healing at the center of possible institutional interventions and implications for higher education (Harris et al., 2021; Karunaratne, 2026). Exploration of the healing of U.S. Centroamericana student survivors was guided through a theoretical framework that heavily centered Centroamericana Feminist epistemological perspectives and Grounded Theory. The research questions included (1) How does a U.S. Centroamericana identity shape experiences with campus sexual and relationship violence? And (2) How do U.S. Centroamericana college students engage healing from their experiences of campus sexual and relationship violence? Centroamericana Feminist Theory is rooted, experienced, and grounded in the lives of various Central American Women writers, creatives, scholars, and theorists connected to a lineage of Black and Indigenous Women and Women of Color feminisms in a praxis of ancestral and embodied knowledge, resistance, anti-oppressive, and decolonial futures, spiritual, and intellectual dimensions (Abrego, 2020; Alma, 2024; Alma & Hernández, 2026; Alvarado et al., 2017; Boj Lopez, 2017; Cáceres Flores, 2007; Hernández-Linares, 2015; Hoppe, 2024; Mena, 2023; Menchú, 2010; Padilla, 2012, 2018; Portillo, 2015; Ramsey, 2024; Rodríguez, 2008). In line with Centroamericana epistemologies and theoretical framework, I used plática, walking plática, collective healing plática, testimonio, field site visits, photo/artifact elicitation, a research journal, and analytical memo to explore embodied experiences of healing. U.S. Centroamericana students are often not centered in higher education research due to the homogenization of the Latine identity and contextual dominance of Mexican-American identity in current research (Maldonado Dominguez, 2019). Emerging research that centers U.S. Centroamericana students must not fracture and remove histories of migration and genealogies that impact the identity formation and wholistic healing of U.S. Centroamericana students on college campuses. The healing of sexual and relationship violence for U.S Centroamericana student survivors is connected to ancestral medicines, systems of spirituality, and ancestral lands that bring tools of resistance and persistence in community with other Women of Color students in higher education. The findings from this dissertation study, Centroamericana Healing Genealogies, can inform the development of healing centered practices (e.g., strategies for advocates, preventionist, campus administrators, educators), inform policy response and prevention efforts on university campuses that restore community relationships, and reimagine how we research sexual violence in higher education that supports the persistence of Indigenous and Black Students and Students of Color.