Biography
Jessica Chiriboga is an MPhil candidate in U.S. History at the University of Oxford. Her research examines the entangled growth and development of Greater Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Mountains, including how race, class, and gender shaped access to outdoor recreation during the range’s ‘Great Hiking Era’ (1880s-1938). Beyond her dissertation, her research interests include the environmental history of the North American West and Latin America, U.S. constitutional interpretation, and freedom of speech. Jess is a postgraduate member of the Rothermere American Institute, the Oxford Environmental History Working Group, the Oxford Cold War Reading Group, and the Oxford Union. She is also a member of the American Historical Association, the American Society for Environmental History, and the Western History Association.
Prior to Oxford, Jess received a BA in History (Honors) from Dartmouth College. Her undergraduate research, supported by a Stamps Scholarship, received the Louis Morton Memorial Prize in American History. Jess served as Student Body President, leading student advocacy to bring teletherapy to campus and overseeing the development of a strategic plan for student mental health. She also organized popular events with speakers from across the political spectrum as President of the non-partisan Dartmouth Political Union. Jess was previously an intern at the Supreme Court of New Hampshire (researching bar exam reform and alternative pathways to bar admission), trained outdoor trip leader for the Dartmouth Outing Club, podcaster for the award-winning podcast UnTextbooked, and a member of Dartmouth’s three-time national champion Varsity Women's Rugby team during her senior year. Jess is a quadruplet and enjoys backpacking and playing rugby with the Oxford University Rugby Football Club in her spare time. After Oxford, she plans to attend law school and pursue a career in the judiciary.