Nico Soto
Graduate Student
History
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About
Nico Soto is a fifth-year PhD candidate researching Mexican farmworker migration and settlement in the upper Midwest. Working under Dr. Adam Goodman, Nico's dissertation examines the connection between seasonal migrant farm labor and post-war Midwest agribusiness in the late 20th century. His work unravels this connection by tracing the commodity history of the pickle from 1942 to 1994, with an emphasis on the post-Bracero Program decades. Nico was recently named the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy's Emerging Scholar in Residence for spring 2025. His work will appear at the 2025 LAWCHA Conference, OAH Conference and the Midwestern History Conference this year.
Nico is from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As a proud native of the region, Nico is passionate about uplifting the history of Latinos and how they have remade the Midwest heartland for more than a century.
Notable Honors:
2024-2025, Emerging Scholar in Residence, Institute on Race and Public Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago
2023-2024, Provost's Award for Graduate Research, University of Illinois at Chicago
2022-2023, Crossing Latinidades Mellon Fellowship, University of Illinois at Chicago
2022-2023, Peer Researcher, Race Laws in the U.S. Southwest: Research Working Group to Document Laws and Their Impacts 1836-Present, Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative
Courses Taught (TA):
Hist 101: Western Civilization Since 1648
Hist 103: Early America: From Colonization to Civil War and Reconstruction
Hist 106: The World Since 1400: Converging Worlds, New Circulations (World History)
Hist 289: Latino/a History