profile
Dr. Paula Orozco-Espinel is a historian of women, gender, medicine, and public health. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Gender Centre of the Geneva Graduate Institute, where she works on the Swiss National Science Foundation–funded project Global Maternity: The Politics of Knowledge Production at the World Health Organization, 1948–2008, led by Professor Nicole Bourbonnais. Dr. Orozco-Espinel’s research explores how political and cultural forces—particularly religion and gender—have shaped medical practices in reproductive healthcare at the local, national, and international levels.
Dr. Orozco-Espinel holds an MA and a PhD in History from the University of Pittsburgh, where she was a Fulbright fellow. Her dissertation, From Family Planning to Reproductive Rights: Women in the History of Birth Control in Colombia, 1964–1994 (currently being revised into a book manuscript), brings to light the contributions of local women, particularly frontline healthcare workers, to expanding access to birth control and reproductive healthcare. Drawing on archival research and oral histories, her work challenges conventional narratives of population control and reproductive rights by highlighting the unexpected roles of religious actors and proponents of Latin American social medicine in shaping national and international family-planning initiatives.
She is also the author of Estrategias de película. Lupe Vélez y Dolores del Río en las industrias fílmicas de México y los Estados Unidos (1921–1946) (Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2025), a book based on research conducted during her MA in Gender Studies at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Through an analysis of the careers and personal lives of two Mexican actresses, the book examines how technological and cultural transformations, including changing ideas about gender and race, shaped the Mexican and U.S. film industries during the transition from silent to sound cinema.
Beyond academic research, she has experience communicating historical knowledge to broader audiences through museum exhibitions, podcasts, public writing, and other multimedia projects.
thematic expertise
- Women’s History
- Gender and Sexuality
- History of Medicine and Public Health
- Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights
- Race and Racism
- Religion, Catholicism
- International Organizations and Global Health Governance
- Latin American Social Medicine
- Oral History and Public History
publications
Books
Maria Paula Orozco Espinel, Estrategias de Película: Lupe Vélez y Dolores del Río en las industrias fílmicas de México y los Estados Unidos, 1921-1946. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia Press, 2025.
Selected Articles and book chapters
- Paula Orozco-Espinel and Daniela Moná Ramírez, “Gloria Valencia de Castaño: tradición y transgresión en voz de la primera dama de la radio colombiana, 1951-1966,” Ni calladas ni sumisas: historia de la transgresión femenina en Colombia, ed. Mabel López Jerez. Bogotá / Cartagena: Editorial Uniagustiniana / Asociación Colombiana de Estudios del Caribe, 2021.
- Paula Orozco-Espinel, “Carmen Miranda en Hollywood (1939-1945): en el centro de la pantalla, al borde de la historia,” Palabras Clave 22.4 (2019).
selected public facing work
- Video “Historia Crítica: 100 números divulgando historia para el presente,” Script and interviews, 9:00 min, 2026.
- Blog Post “Doing Oral History Is Slow Work. Can Artificial Intelligence Help?” Part I and Part II, AI Bites, Graduate AI Innovation and Networking Series (GAINS), 2025.
- Short Article “Promoting Birth Control in 1970s Colombia: Unlikely Alliances On and Off the Screen,” Medicine on Screen. Films and Essays from NLM, 2024.
- Video “Sexism, the Board Game,” Creator and researcher, 3:19 min, 2023.
- Exhibit “100 años de logros feministas,” [A Hundred Years of Feminist Achievements]. Parque de la Independencia, Bogotá, co-curator, 2022.
- Exhibit “A Century of Mobilizing for Reproductive Care.” Hillman Library, Pittsburgh, co-curator, 2021.
- Narrative Podcast “Entre Américas,” Editor in Chief, 1 season, 6 episodes, 2020.
Exhibit “Colombia, 200 años” [Colombia, 200 years]. Bogotá’s International Book Fair, Bogotá, researcher, 2019.