"MELISSA VILLA-NICHOLAS is an assistant professor at the Harrington School of Media and Communications and the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Rhode Island. Her publications include “Data Body Milieu: The Latinx immigrant at the center of technological development” in Feminist Media Studies and “Missing Cells: The Growing Economic Value of Immigrant and Refugee Biological Data"" in Bitch Media. "
“Villa-Nicholas weaves together oral histories and social politics to deliver an encompassing history about Latina information laborers and how they were embedded into telecommunications. It is a deeply compassionate book about community and resilience amidst discrimination and corporate uncertainties at ATT.” -- Sharra Vostral * author of Toxic Shock: A Social History * “Melissa Villa-Nicholas deftly shows how our telecommunications infrastructure, and the labor that undergirds it, have been central to struggles for civil rights. Latinas On The Line is a beautifully written, deeply personal history of a tech labor force that has been simultaneously ubiquitous and hidden—it is a history that holds important lessons about modernization, marginalization, and the exclusion still built in to STEM workforces.” -- Mar Hicks * author of Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Comp *